


Springtime in Hades

by kathyswizards



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Awkward Romance, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Eventual Romance, F/M, Imprisonment, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Hellenistic Religion & Lore), Kylo has a stepmother, No Smut, Rey is adopted, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn Rey/Kylo Ren, Sorcerers, Very brief Reylux, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 40,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathyswizards/pseuds/kathyswizards
Summary: What do you get when you mix a bright young sorceress wrestling with out-of-control powers, a dark, intense stranger, meddling relatives, a spurned suitor, and a love spell?A courtship from Hell.Welcome to the Underworld. We have flowers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story began life as a modern AU of the Hades and Persephone myth. I was looking it over recently and thought, "Hmm. Dark, brooding hero. Bright, spunky heroine... This could be a Reylo story!" So here it is.
> 
> If you'd like to read the original version in full, [you can find it here.](https://books2read.com/u/4N1pNm)

I guess most girls dream of riding off into the sunset with their handsome prince. Well, maybe not most. Some are proper Amazons who consider men a necessary evil at best and a flat-out nuisance at worst. And probably a few fantasize about carrying the _guy_ off.

Me, I’ll admit it. I’m old-fashioned. I always secretly liked the idea of being swept off my feet. The problem is, being whisked away by a tall, dark stranger is a lot more attractive in theory than in fact. My mom, Maz, says it was Luke who caused the whole mess. But after all the stuff she did, of course someone else has to be the villain. I’m more practical. If I had to put the blame anywhere, it’d be on my magic.

My name is Rey. I’m an earth sorceress, although for a while we thought I might not be. A sorceress, that is. And that’s where the trouble started.

See, most sorcerers’ powers come to them around the age of fourteen or fifteen. With me, sixteen passed and I still didn’t show any sorcerous tendencies. Seventeen. By eighteen, I’d pretty much given up hope. (So had my mom, though she’d never admit it.) When my powers finally put in their appearance about a week before my nineteenth birthday, we were ready to throw a party and invite the whole neighborhood, even if regular people—non-sorcerers, I mean—do tend to get a little upset when confronted with real, live magic.

Then came the bad news. My powers were a little, shall we say, _extreme_. Wherever I went—yowsa!—things _grew_. Actually, “grew” is an understatement. More like exploded, doing what life does but with lustful abandon. The kind of magic Mom does, only without the control and subtlety.

I should probably pause here to explain that Mom is actually my adoptive mother. My biological parents disappeared when I was about four. When I say disappeared, I mean like, _poof_. No sign of them. Since she was my godmother and never had any kids of her own, Maz took me in then adopted me when the truth became obvious—they were never coming back.

We had all kinds of guesses about what happened to my parents—did they see something they shouldn’t have? Did they have some kind of accident no one ever found out about? Did someone find out they were sorcerers and do them in? Did they work some kind of magic that swallowed them whole?

I guess I don’t need to tell you, we never have found the answers. Not knowing has always kind of bothered me. At least I don’t remember them to miss them. As far as I’m concerned, Maz is my real mother.

Anyway, about three months after my big questionable pre-birthday gift, I came home to find Luke sitting at the kitchen table drinking a beer. _Oh, yay_ , I thought. As far as I’m concerned, the longer between Luke’s visits, the better I like it. Mom was standing at the sink doing something with herbs—I could smell them, a scent somewhere between lemon and mint.

Luke isn’t a tall man, but he’s _imposing_.  Blue eyes flash lightning from under bushy brows. His grey-streaked beard frames a mouth that can open on thundering peals of laughter or menacing mutters. His fingers are stained yellow from smoking, but Mom wouldn’t (and won’t) let him smoke in her house, even if it was only a little three-room stucco thing with ancient linoleum floors and small, wavy-glassed windows like it was then.

Luke eyed me that way he has that says he’s about to say something really obnoxious.

I was wearing jeans and a tank top. _Maybe the jeans are too tight_ , I think. Or maybe the tank top is a little, um, small for my figure. Let’s put it this way: it didn’t quite reach the waistband of my jeans, and my bra didn’t quite show.

Sure enough, here came the obnoxious comment, but it wasn’t what I expected. He said, “Rey, you need a husband.”

I blinked. “What?”

He drummed his fingers on his beer can: _pap-pap-pap-pap_. “I’m talking about your powers.”

Oh. Great. For three months, Mom and I talked about nothing but. Like how I’d cross a field of thumb-high corn and you could tell exactly where I’d walked, because there’d be this perfect path of rich green taller than me bursting with plump ears. Or the way trees would suddenly burst into leaf and fruit would puff up like popcorn.

All that was awkward enough, but it got worse when people I’d pass on the street would fall into clinches behind me as if some were wearing steel clothes and others were covered with super-powerful magnets.

Now Luke wanted to weigh in.

Mom had her back to me, but I could tell she was pissed—it was like this green gas rising from her head.

She turned and gave Luke a look that can blight crops. “She does _not_ need a husband. She simply needs time to explore her abilities.”

I looked over my shoulder. Through the screen door, the smell of jasmine had followed me into the house, so I knew the star jasmine bushes by the front door had again overgrown the walk in my wake. No doubt our little patch of lawn was knee-high, too.

“Mom isn’t married, and she doesn’t have any trouble with her powers.” I said it very innocently.

People tend to think I’m as green as they come. I can get away with all kinds of sass.

“No,” he said. “She isn’t a virgin, either.”

I’d walked right into that one, but that was ruder than usual. So rude, in fact, my brain was still cranking away at a sufficiently outraged response when Mom slapped the herbs into the sink. With a tang of mint, green dust puffed into the air.

“Luke,” she said sharply, shoving her glasses up her nose so hard they turned askew. “My daughter will make her own choices and tame her power in her own way. I will not have you inflicting your Neanderthal views on her.”

“You will if you don’t want the duds following a path of rampant greenery straight to the doorstep of two sorceresses,” he shot back.

“Duds” is what some sorcerers call regular people. I used the term once and Mom took my power of speech for a whole day. At the moment, however, I was occupied with going hot from the neckline of my tank top to my hairline.

“Just because you have to do it with somebody to make _your_ magic work doesn’t mean everybody else does.” I tried to sound like my usual sweet self, but it came out sounding like honey laced with strychnine. “And since I don’t tell you how to handle your magic, I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell me how to handle mine.”

I stomped through the kitchen and slammed back out through the screen door. The star jasmine vines curled away from my feet. The tall grass swept back as if I were a wind.

How dare he! A husband! Gods! Like I needed a man to control me. Like I couldn’t be a competent sorceress on my own.

“Pig!” I snarled. I clenched my fists and sent magic spurting through my fingers. I wanted to see something shrivel to a blackened crisp so I could pretend it was Luke.

A bombshell of yellow and white butterflies exploded out of the bindweed growing in the roadside ditch. Not at all satisfying.

Okay, yes, fine. I was nineteen and still a virgin. Some people might be ashamed of that, but the way I looked at it, I was picky.

Let’s face it: I look good. That’s not conceit, it’s just fact, and Mom’s always said that false modesty is just vanity dressed up in socially acceptable garb.

The point is, I had my share of admirers. More than my share, some might say. Some I liked all right, but none enough to get hot and heavy with. In fact, none I felt confident who weren’t just after the obvious. And I wasn’t about to do something I didn’t feel like doing just so I could turn in my V-card.

But to have Luke going all paternalistic on me because of it, not to mention him thinking he knew what I did (or didn’t do) with my spare time— _ugh_. I suddenly wished I’d been wearing a pair of baggy sweats. And that still didn’t entirely explain why I was so angry.

I threw myself into my car and slammed the door. That wasn’t very satisfying, either, because I drove a twenty-year-old Toyota and the door sounded like banging an empty tomato can on the kitchen counter. The engine wasn’t powerful enough to spin the tires, so the angriest-sounding thing I could do was wind it up real good before shifting to the next gear.

I hit the road in front of our house, a two-lane farm road as straight as the people around there. A field of bell peppers stretched away on one side, eggplant on the other, the rows of dark green leaves flickering by. Monocrops as monotonous as the Valley itself, about as soothing as a song sung on one note.  

After ten years living in the hills of northern California’s Coast Range, in the little, golden coastal valleys with their oaks and rows of grapevines, we’d moved to the Central Valley. All that agriculture, you know, _and_ a long growing season. Mom could be blissfully busy encouraging the crops to produce their best for nine months out of the year and break up the routine by doing fertility magic and midwifery for the farm laborers’ wives and touring dairies to boost the milk output.

Me, I hated the Valley. It was flat. It was boring. It was foggy for weeks on end in the wintertime and hotter than…well, Hell in the summer, and it had this weird sort of pungent smell, something compounded of fertilizer and manure and rotting cornstalks and stuff left over in the fields after harvesting. And talk about un-magical. Mom could go around doing the most obvious magic and _nobody_ caught on but the field workers.

At times like these, it felt like every problem I had came from the Valley, and if I didn’t get away, I’d explode.

Damn, Luke, anyway. Why did he have to act like some kind of patriarch just because my parents, whatever had happened to them, were nowhere around…

Oh, crap. And if Luke acted like that with Mom, what did he think he could do with _me?_

What argument had I interrupted, anyway? And why was Mom so mad? I shuddered. Luke might be more determined to get me married than I knew.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To her dismay, Rey attracts the attention of Leia.

I headed for the hills, my childhood home, my place of comfort. To the west, the land swelled like ripples of honey. Winding into the hills, the road narrowed, a grey ribbon tracing the creases between. Round, steep slopes pied dark green with oaks rose all around. I was sheltered there. Alone, for the most part. I pulled off the road, cut the engine and climbed out of the car.

A little thread of green down to the right hinted at a spring-fed rivulet. More oaks, grand, twisted and ageless, leaned across it like giants whispering secrets. A meadowlark sang somewhere. A breeze gossiped in the grass. I should have felt better, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell you which churned more, my guts or my brain.

I walked toward the trees a few yards off the road, and the grass went from gossiping to thrashing. I dropped to the ground under the oaks, flung myself on my back and looked up. The black, gnarled branches clattered, raining leaves and green acorns down on me, but what was I supposed to do? I suppose it would’ve been kinder to take my bad attitude to a parking lot somewhere, but then I’d’ve had to watch people frantically piling into backseats.

So I just lay there, staring up at the wispy streaks of mare’s tails against the blue and listening to the poor oaks crack and groan in more growth than they’d put on in the last fifty years. I imagined rolling up my power like a garden hose, trying to make it something tidy and fully in my control, but it kept rearing up and squirting my mind’s eye. And then something changed.

I didn’t know what it was, at first. It was like falling asleep in the shade only to suddenly wake sweating in full sun. I shot up, hands braced behind me.

A woman was walking toward me. She was small and round with hair the color of twilight cascading down her back. Her dress looked like it was woven of grass, and she wore a basketry cap and ropes of necklaces made of seeds. _Yokuts Indian_ popped into my mind, from a picture I’d seen in some book, then the sorceress in me woke up and said, _Um, no, I don’t think so_.

Sometimes with really powerful sorcerers, the magic grows so strong they almost become emanations, embodiments, if you will, of the magic. This woman was so powerful I wasn’t sure if she was even corporeal. Yes, she had a shape I could see and feet (clad in shoes made of woven rushes) that brushed though the grass. But looking into her eyes was like looking up into a moonless night sky way up in the mountains: dark and deep as infinity.

Somewhere between the moment I saw her and the time it took her to cross the few yards to my tree, I’d scrambled to my feet. She was shorter than me, but that didn’t diminish her in the least.

She looked up into the moaning, distressed oaks. “You’re troubled, Kore, and troubling things.” Her voice was like a whisper of flame, soft and rich.

 _Kore?_ Why did she call me that? “I—I’m sorry,” I said. It was pitiful, but I couldn’t think of anything else. And whoever this lady was, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to piss her off.

She considered me. A breeze wound around her like an affectionate cat, lifting her dark hair over one shoulder, tickling her face with its ends. “Come,” she said at last. “Let us take your trouble elsewhere and let these, my other children, grow in peace.”

I swallowed once. Or tried to, anyway, brushing leaves and an acorn cap out of my hair. “Okay.”

I wasn’t about to argue. Earth sorcerers don’t like people messing with their charges—I knew that from Mom. And this one made my mom look like a birthday party magician.

The world turned…sort of translucent, I guess, then foggy, or blurry, and then it gradually faded into somewhere else. Actually, _somewhere_ isn’t quite accurate, since I suspect it was another dimension, some plane where magic is a purer force than it is in the so-called real world.

The sorceress beside me looked like a goddess, moonlit skin, midnight hair, a dress of rain, blouse of clouds and cloak of wind. She glowed like a sleepy volcano with the fires of her power. Her eyes, though, remained as I’d seen them, night-dark and deep.

She glanced aside at me. I think she was watching to see how I took the translocation. I’m not sure what she saw, but I felt small and tacky.

“You’re Maz’s daughter.”

This was not a question, but I nodded unnecessarily.

“Young,” she said. “Very young.” She said it like a mother speaking of her homely child.

I gave a rueful shrug.

 “Hmm.” She began walking.

This place—plane, whatever—was similar to what I’d just left, except that the grass we walked through was the essence of grass, the hills the souls of hills, not quite so solid-looking and more glowy. The oaks gazed down on us with slow, ancient awareness. I hunched my shoulders and thought _Sorry!_ at them.

 As we went, the trees began to look more like columns, the grass more like a floor, the hills like walls. Even growing up in a sorcerous family, this was strange, let me tell you.  It was stranger still because the house seemed to have a consciousness, and it was aware of me.

“Um,” I said, “where are we going, Ma’am?” I really wanted to ask, _What are you going to do with me?_ but this seemed neither particularly diplomatic nor something I really wanted to know.

She smiled as if she knew exactly what I hadn’t asked. “To my workshop. It’s accustomed to containing great power.”

Oh. Or was it uh-oh?

“What does your mother call you?” she asked.

“Rey—Reyna, when I’m in trouble.”

“Reyna,” she said, smiling again. “I am Leia.”

 _Leia?_ Oh, gods. The Earth Mother. Even I knew her by reputation, no matter that Mom and I almost never hung around other sorcerers. And she’d called me Reyna. But I didn’t need that to tell me I was in big trouble. I’d been spouting off power for three months or so. So what had I finally done that was so awful she’d decided to put in an appearance?

“So, why do you leave your mother’s dominion to come troubling mine?”

“I—oh—well…” I started to point at the columns that had been tormented oak trees a few minutes ago, but since they were now pillars of black marble with green veining, threw up my hands instead. “You saw. No, it’s more than that. My uncle seems to think—” I glanced at her. I really hated spilling the tawdry particulars of our little family spat.

 “Your uncle Luke? A great practitioner of sex magic.” She gazed at me politely—and shrewdly. “And one who tends to think in such terms.”

There was no particular reason my face should go hot at this comment, nevertheless it did. “Exactly.” I looked down at the green and brown and gold tiles passing under my feet. They looked strangely like an aerial view of the Valley and hills, but without roads or buildings. “I don’t think my magic is dependent on that.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Are you so sure what your magic is and is not?”

It was patently obvious I didn’t. So what was she saying? That Luke was right? I shrugged. “I guess I don’t want someone telling me. I need to find out for myself.”

“Yes,” she said with a single, firm nod.

Although that should have been encouraging, I was alarmed. Well, more alarmed, I should say. It wasn’t as if I could excuse myself, return to my car and drive home if I felt like it. And what, exactly, was supposed to take place in this workshop that could contain great powers?

So I’d pretty much worked myself up to the point where I was sick to my stomach by the time Leia stopped in front of a door. It was carved, and the copper nails and bindings were so old they’d turned green and bled darkish, greenish streaks down the wood.

“Here we are,” she said.

I eyed the door. Would I find behind it a great cauldron in which she stirred the climate? Or maybe a computer where she ran simulations of entire ecosystems? Maybe the room would be empty except for a comfortable chair where she sat when she linked psychically with the world organism, brain to its body.

The door swung open on a sigh of hinges.

The place looked like a cross between a zoo and a huge potting shed. The walls alternated wicker cages with slatted benches. A microscope and small chemistry lab complete with beakers, test tubes and flasks stood atop glossy wood cabinets in a little alcove. If this was her workshop, she was a real workaholic. But this was the classic earth sorceress, too. According to Mom, maybe the oldest and most powerful in the world.

The cages were all empty, as were most of the potting benches, except for a few plants clustered together off to one side: azaleas, oleander, gardenia, lily, a rose and an iris, all white. They made a couple of exotic-looking house plants with dark, almost black leaves look somber and standoffish by comparison. Since my emotional state was anything but tranquil, the plants all kind of rustled, like elegant ladies at a tea party where someone just fumbled a cup.

Leia extended a small hand. “I would like you to work with these.”

I looked across the hangar-like expanse of workshop at the huddle of plants. They seemed to stare warily back.

“Work?”

What was I supposed to do? More to the point, why?

“I wish to create a hybrid,” she explained and gestured as if sketching a vision. “I see black foliage nicely setting off white flowers.”

I looked at the plants—different species. Hell, even different genera—then back at her. “Um…”

Gathering some little camel hair brushes from a drawer, she smiled. “You are an earth sorceress, are you not?”

I sighed silently. “I’m a make-everything-insanely-fruitful sorceress, as far as I can tell.” Beloved at the nursery where I worked for starts and transplants, but the gods knew what would happen if I tried to get fancy.

She handed me the brushes, smiling implacably. “Indulge me.”

I took them and said, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Hey, would _you_ argue with a sorceress so steeped in magic she was halfway to becoming a goddess?

The plants, of course, proved to be happy to do as I asked, unfurling perfect flowers. Even the black-leaved houseplants did, although their flowers were tiny and pale and waxy-looking, like grubs or baby moles. I dabbed pollen from stamens and brushed it onto pistils, while Leia wrote on little tags and covered the fertilized flowers with clear plastic bags.

I won’t go into the details of propagation. Leave it to say that we soon had several flats of black-green sprouts. I potted them as fast as I could, and when I finished the last ones, the first were in bloom, all black-leaved with clear white flowers, naturally, since that was what I’d wanted.

Leia studied them, examining leaves and sniffing flowers. I stood behind her, nibbling on a thumbnail and shifting my weight.

What was the point of all this? Maybe she was testing me somehow, trying to find if I was worth the trouble after all the havoc I’d caused. If not—what? Would she take me home and impose upon Mom to take some serious steps to rein me in? Or worse, did she herself have something in mind?

She stepped back and turned to me. “Choose the best.”

Best? Best for what? Hardiness? Vigor? Beauty? Or maybe the question had nothing to do with any of that. Maybe it was another test.

I looked them over with both ordinary and magical perception. It was hard to choose since I’d made them myself, admittedly under worrisome circumstances. I settled on a lush, tropical-looking rosette of long, tongue-shaped leaves with irisy flowers.

“This one.”

She gave me an indecipherable, sidelong look. “Yes? Why?”

“Well…” I shifted my weight again and brushed invisible specks of potting mix off my hands. “I think it’s the prettiest, and…”

“And?”

“It just wants to _be_. It’s full of life and…” I gestured, searching for words to explain.

“Love?” she offered.

Love, hmm. Was that it? The plant felt to me like a lamp in the darkness, like no matter what happened, it would continue to shine. But love? I wasn’t sure about that. I shrugged.

She turned, caressing a white, ruffled petal with a strong finger. “What does your mother say of your magic?”

“Not much.” I pulled a rose petal off the bush beside me, rubbed it between my fingers. It felt like moist silk. “I think she’s worried, though.” I breathed in the rose fragrance, a smell like spice and citrus and rain. “ _I’m_ worried.”

I’d been worried about so many things lately the admission just popped out. I held the pale petal to my nose and breathed. Leia didn’t say anything, and her silence began to feel like someone who is reluctant to speak an unpleasant truth.

“It’s not like we haven’t been trying to—to control it, you know—Mom and I.” I threw up my hands. “It’s like owning this huge, exuberant Great Dane puppy, and every time I try to take it out somewhere, it goes lunging off, dragging me along on the other end of the leash.”

To my utter humiliation, tears started in my eyes. Boo-hoo. Poor little Rey, bursting with uncontrollable impulses like some angst-ridden teenager. I sniffed and cleared my throat.

Leia cupped the flower in one hand as if it were a tear-streaked face. Letting her hand fall, she turned. “You make things grow and bloom, do you not?”

I nodded, swallowing. My throat still felt achy and threatening.

“Perhaps,” she said, “your difficulty lies in that you haven’t yet found the proper subject. Perhaps, rather than struggling against what you contain, you should search for its purpose.”

I wasn’t sure whether to fall to my knees in gratitude or begging: the first because it sounded like she wasn’t planning anything dreadful for me after all, the second because she might know what I had to do but wasn’t planning to tell me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey meets Hux and embarrasses herself. Twice. When she gets a special invitation, things begin to look up.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of my little adventure in the hills. Leia put me back where I belonged, but why had she whisked me away to her realm to begin with? Surely not to do something she could have done, except better and with less fuss.

Need I say I didn’t tell Mom? Not that we tend to keep things from each other, but if she knew I’d disturbed the Big Gun of earth sorceresses, she might be inclined to drastic measures—like listening to Luke.

No thanks.

I was in the kitchen fixing us pepper jack cheese sandwiches on bagels with cucumber, sprouts and Dijon mustard when someone knocked. Mom, stirring sugar into fresh-squeezed lemonade, left the spoon in the pitcher and went to answer the door.

Luke’s rusty voice came from the front room. Ugh. He’d just been here a couple of weeks ago. At least this time I was wearing a t-shirt and green overalls, my work clothes.

I cut the sandwiches in half, put them on plates, finished stirring the sugar into the lemonade and poured. Two plates, two glasses. I did _not_ want to encourage Luke to stay. Besides, he’s more of a spareribs and baked potato sort of guy.

“Rey,” Mom called from the front room.

That was strange. Usually Luke just imposed his way on in. Gods forbid he should allow himself to be invited to join us for lunch like anyone else. I put our sandwiches on the table.

“Coming, Mom.” I thought about stalling by putting the lemonade in the fridge and wiping the counter, but that would look like tidying up for Luke’s benefit. So I just wiped my hands and went out.

Luke was dressed in a sky-blue polo shirt, new jeans and boots. Someone else stood in the space between the open door and the window, where the glare from outside made it hard to see, but I was more curious about Luke’s upgraded attire.

He extended a blunt hand toward me and said, “This is Maz’s girl, Rey. Rey, meet Hux.”

The someone stepped forward, and a hand captured mine. “Hello,” he said, shaking my hand. “Pleased to meet you, Rey.”

“Uh, hi,” I said.

I had an impression of tallness and fairness, then my brain came back online.

He was tall, all right, slender without being skinny, with grey-blue eyes and a wide, engaging grin. His hair was the color of brushed copper and… _wow_. He was the realized ideal of an aristocrat.

He must’ve been cranking out pheromones or something because I just stood there shaking his hand like I was priming a pump.

“Hi!” I said again, and my voice sounded like a middle-school girl’s, all bright and breathless. “We were just having lunch. Would you like some?”

Mom’s brows rose behind her glasses.

“That sounds wonderful,” Luke said, shooting Mom a look. At the moment, though, I wasn’t paying much attention.

“We wouldn’t want to impose…” Hux said.

He broke eye contact for a questioning glance at Luke and my mom, and I abruptly recognized that look on Luke’s face: smugness.

Mom made gracious noises and ushered the men into the kitchen. She got two more glasses out of the cupboard and poured lemonade. I opened the fridge. Half my attention was on rattling off lunch choices like the waitress at the diner down by the railroad tracks while the other half seethed about that smug look.

The contents of the refrigerator weren’t nearly as distracting as Hux. Possibilities were beginning to occur to me. I carried lettuce and a tomato to the sink and began washing them.

“What do you do, Hux?” Mom said.

“I’m presently a student.” With the polished lilt of an English accent, his voice was almost as distracting as his face. I concentrated on his words.

“And what are you studying?” She might have asked, _Who are you studying with?_ since neither one of us could miss the fact that he was a sorcerer. But believe it or not, sorcerers go to everyday, garden-variety school like I had, so the question wasn’t unreasonable.

“Are you working today, Rey?” Luke said loudly, but not loudly enough that I missed Hux’s answer:

“I’m studying with Luke.”

My hands froze on the lettuce leaf. My guts, on the other hand, cranked up to _Incinerate_. The lettuce leaf suddenly sprouted into a whole head and the tomato produced six or seven pups, like a succulent.

There was silence behind me, but my ears buzzed like someone had whacked a hornet’s nest in my head. I dropped the lettuce in the sink, shut off the tap and turned.

I looked at Luke. If my magic worked that way, _he_ might’ve been sprouting pups or extra heads. The silence seemed to stretch on and on, though it was probably only a second or two.

“Work today?” I said to him. “Yep. In fact, I gotta go.” Drying my hands on a dishtowel, I turned to Hux. “Glad to’ve met you. Good luck with your studies,” I added in my usual sunshine-and-daisies voice.

I tossed the dishtowel on the counter and stalked out.

I stomped into the nursery awhile later, the drive from the house taking considerably less time than usual. At this rate, I was going to blow a rod in my poor old Toyota.

Unkar Plutt, the owner, was at the counter ringing up a middle-aged lady’s purchases: hot-pink and lavender crepe myrtles, heavenly bamboo and some ajuga. A couple of women conferred over the pinks.

Finn, one of my coworkers and my also my best friend, was tidying wisteria plants in the Vines section. He looked up. “Hey, Rey.”

“Hey,” I said. The honeysuckles were winding vines around one another, creeping themselves upward like wrestling snakes. I hurried past before Finn could notice.

“Aren’t you early?” he called.

“A little,” I called back and ducked into the back section, where the young plants were hardened off.

The ones nearest me put on two or three months’ growth before I made it into the greenhouse. At the potting bench, I pulled a stack of plastic six-pack containers and a bag of seed-starting medium from under the bench.

Finn came in behind me. He’s a good-looking black guy a few years older than me. He’d worked at the nursery since he was eighteen, finished a degree in Ornamental Horticulture from Modesto JC and was starting his landscape design business.

Most of the young people working at Jakku Gardens were just there for the after-school bucks, but Finn and I were true disciples. Barring sorcery, we had a lot in common.

“A little early, huh?” he said. “How about two hours?”

I scooped seed-starting medium into the containers. “Yeah, well.”

He leaned against a support beam. “What’s the matter? Tell Uncle Finnigan.”

“Nothing you can help with.” Unless he knew a hitman who specialized in sorcerers.

I scanned the list of stuff Unkar wanted started: sunflowers, marigolds, moss rose, verbena: the kind of thing that tolerated the hot, dry Valley summers.

He studied me. “It must be gruesome, since you’re not your usual sweet, cheery self.”

I jabbed holes in the medium with a dowel. “My mom’s bestie, Luke, is trying to marry me off. He brought a prospective bridegroom to inspect the goods just now.”

His brows shot up like Mom’s had. “How…quaint,” he finally managed diplomatically. “Was he awful? Balding and with red and blue veins on his nose? Or maybe young with thick glasses and a bulging Adam’s apple.”

I made a disgusted noise. “He was young and polite and looked like a movie star. His voice would melt chocolate.”

“Hmm.” Finn nodded thoughtfully. “And the problem is?”

“He’s too pretty for my taste,” I grumbled.

“Right. That kind of thing is always a deal-breaker.”

I rounded on him. “Hey, I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell Luke my best friend is also single, and he can work on arranging a marriage for _you_. If the guy he brings around decides you’ll do, I’ll go to the wedding and throw rice.”

Finn held up his hands. “Okay! I was just trying to put a positive spin on the situation. You were the one who painted the scrumptious picture.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks.”

He came and leaned beside me. “Is it really that bad?”

I nodded. “You’d think I could decide when and who I want to marry, wouldn’t you?”

He looked shocked. Apparently he thought I’d been exaggerating. Maybe I’d told him too many horror stories about Luke.

“Jesus, Rey. Why don’t you leave home? You’re an adult. You don’t have to put up with crap like that.”

That was oddly comforting, although it didn’t change anything.

I shrugged. “I like living with my mom. We get along really well. And we’d miss each other if we were apart.”

He shook his head, took a few plastic six-packs and started slowly filling one. “So what happened?”

I shrugged. “Luke brings this guy in, I spend the first ten minutes drooling and batting my eyelashes, then see the look on Luke's face and realize what’s going on.”

“And then?”

I poked marigold seeds into the little holes I’d made. _Please_ , I thought, _don’t pop up yet. Wait until tomorrow, at least._

“I left my lunch sitting on the kitchen table, grabbed my car keys and came here.”

Finn stared at me. “You didn’t even talk to him?”

“Before I came to my senses, I asked him to stay for lunch.”

“Rey!”

“What?”

“You ask the poor guy to stay for lunch and then leave?”

“Well…” Looked at in that light, it was pretty bad. I thought of Hux’s grin while he shook my hand, his abashed look as I stalked out, the silence in the kitchen as I shoved through the door. “They shouldn’t have sprung him on me like that, then.”

“What did they say? ‘Here’s your future husband, Rey. Give him a kiss and let’s figure out where to seat the guests.’”

I smoothed medium over the seeds with my thumb. “No…” My t-shirt suddenly felt itchy, especially under the arms and around the collar.

He leaned an elbow on the bench. “Your face is red.”

“Maybe I overreacted a little. Nothing I can do about it now.”

He raised his brows.

I banged the scoop I’d been using on the bench. “If I go home and apologize, Luke will think he’s won. It’ll be ten times worse.”

Another man’s deep voice said from the greenhouse door, “I was going to let you buy me out on good terms when I retire, but now I see you two standing there yakking like the rest of the kids, I’m not so sure.”

Finn and I turned. Unkar stood in the doorway, his bald head gleaming like a polished stone in the sunlight, an arch look on his round, jowly face.

Unkar was actually a fantastic boss if you loved plants and were willing to work. If you did, he’d answer all your questions, show you how to do anything you asked and pretty much leave you alone and let you do your job. Those who treated the nursery like a big backyard in which to squirt hoses at coworkers and find shady places to sleep also thought he was a great guy—until they found themselves standing on the sidewalk with their final checks in their hands.

“I’m not on the clock yet, Unkar,” I said.

“Then what’re you doing here, distracting my employees?”

“Working,” I replied the same time Finn said, “She’s hiding out.”

Looking from one to the other of us, he said, “Uh-huh.”

“But see,” I said cheerfully, “it’s okay for Finn to stand here talking to me because I’m working for free to make up for it.”

“Sure,” he said, nodding. “As long as you two got nothing to do, come with me.” He turned and disappeared from the doorway.

Finn gave me an alarmed look. I wasn’t feeling optimistic, either, but that might have been leftover guilty conscience from the subject of our interrupted conversation.

Unkar wasn’t waiting. As he passed the mugo pines, he called to Ryle to keep an eye on things for a few minutes. Ryle, watering the ferns, nodded and walked over to shut off the water. When he saw Finn and me slinking after Unkar, he turned his hands palm up: _What’s up?_ Finn shrugged, I flapped a hand at him and we both stepped into the store.

The shelves of garden tools and seeds and pots stood ranked like clay statues of soldiers in a Chinese tomb. Wind chimes tinkled in the breeze that came through the open door. The pungent smells of fertilizer and weed killer curled around me. I didn’t see Unkar anywhere, but his office door was open, so I knew he was in there. We walked in, and Finn shut the door. Pessimist.

Unkar gave him a funny look, one I couldn’t quite figure out. It might have been amusement or puzzlement or wickedness, of some combination of all three. He sat down and as usual, his chair gave an agonized squeak. Finn and I stood in front of his desk like kids sent to the principal’s office.

He rummaged around in a pile of bills, advertisements and order forms, grunted and pulled out a card.

It was about the size and shape of a formal invitation, parchment brown with a trimming of green foil. Apparently thinking it was a Go to the Unemployment Line card, Finn could only stare at it, so I took it.

Large, ornate letters read:

 

* * *

 

**_Plant Show_ **

**_Palace Suites Hotel, Modesto, California_ **

**_Friday, August 26_ **

_You are cordially invited to an event hosted by California’s most exclusive hybridizer, TerraVisions. Please join us for a very special debut of our newest cultivars, specimens guaranteed to intrigue the most discriminating gardener._

_This will be a semi-formal occasion complete with hors d’oeuvres and a full-host bar._

_**Please RSVP to Lee Organa of TerraVisions by July 19**._ 

* * *

 

 

Finn was anxiously reading over my shoulder. We looked at each other, then at Unkar.

One side of his mouth quirked in a half-repressed smile. “I was planning on sending you two, ‘cause I figured you’d look a lot better in monkey clothes than me. But now—”

“Is this the part where we’re supposed to beg?” I clutched the invitation to my breast. “Please, Unkar, please let us go. I’ll stand in the middle of the nursery and murmur encouraging words to the plants all day.” He was always teasing me about how much better the plants grew when I was around. Ha-ha.

“I’ll scrub the whole pile of used containers with bleach water,” Finn added.

Ooh. That one was hard to top. Bleach water did terrible things to your hands. “I’ll replace the broken lathe over the hostas,” I said.

“I’ll—” Finn began.

Unkar laughed and waved his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Next you’ll be promising me free labor for a year.”

“Not me,” Finn said. “I have to pay rent.”

Unkar looked at me.

Uh-oh. Time to change the subject. I put on my best oblivious look. “So why do you want to send us?”

He leveled a finger on us. “It’s time you two learn the buying side of the business. That part’s just as important as the customers and the plants, ‘cause if you don’t have what people want, you’re not gonna stay in business long.”

“Right, Unkar,” we said meekly.

Finn’s eyes were wide and dreamy. Visions of blue roses, red wisteria and white marigolds flitted through my imagination, so I probably looked much the same. With everything going on in my life at the moment, it was as if a miserable Valley winter fog had wisped away to let the clear sunlight pour down


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Kylo's meet-cute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: a brief moment of sexually aggressive behavior beginning with "And kissed me."

It would be nice to be able to say that everything unfortunate and difficult had been wiped away with the glowing news of the upcoming plant show.

But the fact remained that in addition to still splattering magic everywhere like gore in a slasher film, I’d been Bad, Rude and Generally Unpleasant. Every time I thought about the dismay on Hux’s good-looking (if somewhat too pretty) face, I cringed.

Okay, yes, he was Luke’s student, but it didn’t necessarily mean that he had to assume Luke’s attitudes. After all, this is the twenty-first century. Even sorcerers have to adapt to the times.

The mature thing would’ve been to call Hux and apologize. I didn’t. I dithered. I made excuses to myself. I rationalized that all the drama was in my own head, and he’d probably only seen a woman who had to hurry up and get to work. If I did bring it up, it would cause more embarrassment than if I’d left the matter alone. Worse still, it might look like some kind of overture of romantic interest.

The weeks leading up to the Plant Show went by in this fashion. The day—or afternoon, rather—finally arrived, and though I was no closer to dealing with the consequences of my behavior, I was perfectly happy to forget about them for the moment.

Finn pulled up in his old pickup and got out, dressed in a snappy pinstriped suit and wearing a tie in hues of aqua and lavender. He wore mother-of-pearl cufflinks and a tiny diamond earring that glinted like a little star against his dark skin. Climbing out of that truck, he looked like contradiction personified.

Mom had helped me with my hair. I usually just pulled it back in a bun, but now it was piled up on my head with a few alluring wisps loose on my cheeks and neck.

We stood and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over each other’s clothes and jewelry, then I kissed Mom goodbye, hitched up my skirt and climbed into Finn’s truck.

Modesto seemed enormous to me since Mom had never been one for cities, even small ones. Highway 99 with its iceplant and oleander, its cloverleaf on- and offramps, wasn’t terribly foreign, but the hotel—my gosh, ten stories or so!—was amazing. The inside seemed like a palace, the marble floors, the reception desk with its brass trim and uniformed staff.

We made our way along a gallery the width of a narrow street to open double doors.  The room inside was filled with men in dark suits, women in as many kinds of dresses as there are flowers in a meadow. The murmur of conversation, the chime of laughter, the clink of glasses wove, curiously, throughout the splashing of water. We threaded our way through the logjam of people near the doors and the room opened ahead.

A little fountain played in the center of the room under a round skylight. It was still early enough that soft evening light filtered through, bathing the fountain, the circle of tile and the people around it in undersea tints. And plants were everywhere, along the walls, surrounding the fountain, hanging from the ceiling, standing among the guests like well-behaved children.

“Wow,” Finn breathed.

I just nodded. We drifted toward the nearest plant, something that looked like a bougainvillea except the bracts were gold as coins and the leaves were watermelon-striped green and white, but something else snared my attention.

Magic. I stopped and looked. Another sorcerer was here—no, several sorcerers. The longer I looked around, the more I saw. Not as many as there were regular people, of course, but more than a handful. Weird.

Finn was looking back at me. “What’s wrong?”

 _I thought I recognized someone_ , I started to say, since I obviously couldn’t tell the truth. If I’d only turned around, I could’ve said it with perfect honesty.

Someone put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Hello, Rey.”

I turned, and there was Hux.

I came this close to blurting out, _What’re you doing here?_ Fortunately, I didn’t, and bit my lip to make sure it stayed that way. He was nicely dressed in a navy blue jacket over an open shirt and beige slacks.

He apparently mistook my dismay for puzzlement, because he said, “Remember me? Hux.”

“Hux, yes, hi,” I said weakly.

Oh, gods. I was getting hot from my armpits all the way to my hairline. And violent red would definitely not go with my ensemble. I glanced around like a cornered criminal.

It only got worse. With my distressed emotional state, my already shaky grip on magic was slipping. Finn was eyeing Hux with unseemly interest.

“Finn,” I said. “This is Hux, Luke’s student.” I couldn’t just get rid of him without some kind of introduction. It would look weird. No, it would look like I wanted him to myself—I mean, _for_ myself. And Finn was too good a friend to make him feel that way. “Will you excuse us for a minute?”

He only gazed at Hux like a comet being pulled into the sun. The people within my immediate proximity were all gravitating toward nearby members of the opposite sex—and a few others to the same sex.

I knew I should've made that phone call to Hux, and now I was going to have to humiliate myself without the proper loin-girding.

I put on a smile, pretended half the room wasn’t about to ravish the other half and asked him, “Can we talk?”

His brows quirked, but he still smiled. “Of course.”

I grabbed his hand, towed him out of the room and down the hallway. To the right, a door opened to the outside. I pushed through, out onto a patio. The lights in the pool nearby sent ripples of blue light shivering across the surrounding walls.

Releasing Hux’s hand, I walked to the patio, found a couple of chairs and sat down. He sat too, looking concerned.

“I’m really sorry about that.” I dropped my head in my hand. This was not beginning well. “That is, I owe you an apology.” He opened his mouth to say something, but if I was going to do it, I’d better get it over with. “I was rude. At my mother’s house. You didn’t deserve that.”

There. I would have let out a breath, but I’d already run out of air saying all that in a rush.

Now he looked serious. “I did sense some tension.”

“It was nothing to do with you.” Or at least not directly.

He glanced down. “I appreciate that. But…I had the sense that it _was_ me.”

What could I say? It depended if he was in collusion with Luke’s plots?

I sighed. “It’s…” His face still wore that expression of gentle concern. And after all, he had eyes. Surely he’d seen what happened back in the room. “It’s just that my magic tends to be a little…” I gestured, euphemisms having failed me for the moment.

“Vigorous?” he offered.

I made a face. “Something like that. And Luke—” There was a lot I could say on the subject. However, I needed to remember that this man was his pupil. “Well, he has his ideas, and he’s very set on them.”

Hux laughed. “He is, isn’t he?”

A little smile tugged at my lips. Maybe in spite of his pretty-boy looks, Hux was all right. So often people who look like him tend to forget they need to be decent human beings, too. And it would be a shame to have to despise him.

“I’m afraid so,” I replied.

“But listen,” he said. “Seriously, there is something you can do about your…problem.”

I tensed. “Yeah?”

He glanced around the patio. Except for the two of us, it was empty, just the glowing blue water rippling softly in the dimness, the lonely chairs and tables and chaise lounges.

He stood and held out a hand. “Here, give me your hand.”

I eyed him. “Why?”

“I want to show you something. It’s nothing terrible.”

Of course, if I didn’t, I’d look like an idiot. So I gave him my hand. He pulled me to my feet.

“Now,” he said and raised his other hand. “Ready?”

I suppose I could have said something about abandoning my friend so suddenly, or that this wasn’t the time and place to be trying magic. I could even have simply said “No,” but politeness can put you in all kinds of awkward positions.

His hand was level with my head. While I stood there trying to figure out how to get out of my predicament, he slipped it around behind my head and pulled me to him.

And kissed me.

Now, let me explain that Hux’s magic is not trivial. Nor are other sorcerers necessarily immune to it. And his magic happens to be _really good_ for this kind of thing.

All of which goes a long way toward explaining why I just stood there for some unknown amount of time, more or less gradually turning into a pair of lips with a body attached. It was getting to the point where other, tenderer parts began to respond when I thought, _Hey, wait a minute. Going pretty_ fast _here, aren’t we?_

I tried to pull away, but he locked my head in the crook of one arm and clamped his other hand on my butt to grind me against him. This, however, did not have the desired effect of convincing me to succumb to his male prowess or whatever. I started struggling in earnest, and the bastard _bit my lip_.

I was furious. And honestly, not a little scared. If I’d been able to think about it, I could’ve used magic on him. A little burst of what _I_ can do, and his intestinal flora or the bacteria living on his skin would’ve experienced a sudden population explosion. The resulting prurient rash (no pun intended) or expulsion of bodily fluids from both ends would have discouraged him nicely.

But under the circumstances, I did what comes naturally: I kneed him.

I found myself standing free while he snarled obscenities and clutched something rather more important to him than I was.  I paused long enough to finger my poor lip and spit a few choice cusswords of my own. Then I bolted.

I not-quite ran down the corridor, my long, full skirt tangling around my legs. My heart galloped, and my lip was throbbing on the offbeats like the tuba bass line in a marching band— _oomp-oomp_. I touched it again—it didn’t feel like it was bleeding, but did feel puffy.

Damn him! What if it started showing a bruise? Wisps of hair flew around my face and brushed my shoulders. My hands shook when I tried to stuff the loose bits back up into my hairdo. At last, I spotted the ladies’ room. I dived inside.

I definitely couldn’t return to the Plant Show in my present condition. Even after I’d applied large amounts of cold water to my lip, repaired my hair and straightened my clothes, it was a while before I felt reasonably sure that my entrance wouldn’t instantly turn the room into a jungle full of couples attacking each other.

It did cross my mind to leave a message for Finn and call Mom to come get me, but dammit! I’d come to see the plants. I _wanted_ to see the plants. Why should I let Hux send me scampering home like a scared puppy?

So I took a long breath, looked in the mirror again to make sure my lip wasn’t showing any visible damage and marched out of the bathroom. (Actually, I cracked the door open and peeked through first. _Then_ I marched out.)

The Plant Show’s enormous room was even fuller than when I’d left it. The sound of voices filled the space like the drone of crickets on a summer night. And what was with all these sorcerers? Magic hazed the air, buzzed against my skin, chirped and hummed and sang. I didn’t recognize any faces, but that wasn’t surprising. Mom preferred to spend her time helping regular people.

I searched for Finn for a while without success, then decided we’d bump into one another sooner or later. Plus it was getting harder to walk past all those fantastic plants.

I drifted to magenta irises edged in gold to roses with the fragrance of orange blossoms. I drooled over apple trees bearing fruit like carved ivory spheres. Crowds gathered around the showiest plants, like the one hanging above the fountain. It had to be a fuchsia of some kind, although the leaves were purplely-green and its flowers sported orange sepals with a creamy yellow corona. It looked like a sunset.

I moved before it had a chance to grow noticeably, meandering my way toward the quieter fringes. Here plants stood in little alcoves lit with spots and accompanied by black nameplates, like the works of art they were. And like avant-garde art, they drew only a few people to silently admire their charms. The sword-leaved thing with spidery, dark maroon flowers. A plant that looked like a contorted old troll with a spray of twisted grass for hair. A succulent like a pile of rocks.

Of course, I was one of the die-hards, walking from one to the next with absorbed contentment and delight until a jolt of some seriously powerful magic buffeted me from the side. Startled— (No, I have to be honest here. A bolt of panic went through me.) —my head snapped around.

A few feet away, a man stood alone in a little cul-de-sac in front of another plant. What it was, I didn’t know—I could only see tips of dark leaves. His back was to me, showing a tall, broad-shouldered form in a black suit and thick, wavy black hair skimming the collar.

I relaxed. He was a sorcerer, obviously, but not Hux, and that was enough to keep me from ducking for the nearest source of cover. In fact, the odd… _straining_ of magic, as if something was blocking or interfering with it in some way, made me curious.

For some time, he just stood looking at the plant. At last, he raised his hand to it. His gloved fingers hung inches from the leaves…then fell to his side again without touching them.

It was such a despairing, lonely gesture, I half wanted to slip away to give the poor guy some privacy, half wanted to ask him if he was okay. Then he moved slightly and I saw the plant he was looking at.

Have you ever had the experience of seeing someone you know out of context? Like a casual acquaintance at the grocery store, and you know you’ve seen them somewhere before but damned if you can remember where.

Seeing the plant sitting there on its little pedestal in that spotlighted alcove was like that. It was about the general size of a hybrid tea rosebush, its foot-long, black-velvet leaves springing upward in a graceful fountain, a crown of clear white ruffled flowers floating like gleaming drops on their tall stalks.

It was my plant. The one Leia had asked me to create.

I gave a little “Oh!” of surprise, and the man turned.

I would say he spun, except the movement was too controlled for that. But it was quick, and he caught me staring.

He was good-looking, but in an unusual sort of way. More _compelling_. A prominent nose was balanced by a strong brow and full lips framed by a neat goatee. He looked maybe ten years or so older than me. And his eyes—the Phantom of the Opera must’ve had eyes like that. Rasputin. Svengali. I was looking right into them from a distance of no more than four feet and couldn’t tell you what color they were, only that I couldn’t look away.

It began to dimly occur to me that I was being rude again, on several fronts.

“Oh,” I said again and blinked. “I—um—didn’t mean to, um…disturb you.”

He stood still, and for a second I thought he would just walk away. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.

But he said, “Not at all.”

I took a step toward him, gesturing at the plant. My plant. “It’s…very different, isn’t it?”

“Lovely, I’d say,” he said, but didn’t look back at it.

I did. The little black label lettered in gold on the pedestal said _Pseudocolocasia Albaflora – Night’s Crown._

I had a horror it might be named something like Reynia or Rayneii. And it really was lovely, all black depths and star-white, a marriage of opposites. It was something my power had done that I could actually be proud of, even if no one knew but Leia and me.

I returned my attention to my companion, still politely waiting for me to respond or excuse myself. I realized for the first time how really big he was—not only tall, but _big_. I’m not short by any stretch of the imagination, but he towered almost a head over me.

“I’m Rey,” I said, extending a hand.

He just folded his and inclined his head. “Kylo.”

He was so sad and grave I couldn’t bear it.

“Come on, shake hands,” I said with a laugh, reached out and took his hand.

There was a buzz of resistance then a jolt, like plunging your hand into a stream running straight out of a snowbank, cold so intense you can’t tell if the water is steaming hot or icy.

My own magic gave a sort of lurching response, then it was just my hand in a man’s warm, gloved one, or his in mine, though his was tense as though ready to be snatched away. His eyes (dark, I now saw, like the rest of him) widened a little. Shock, I realized, and started to pull my hand away.

He, on the other hand, clasped tighter. “You,” he breathed.

His voice held some strong emotion, and all I could think was, _Good job, Rey. You’ve done it again._ I hadn’t meant to be pushy and obnoxious, but how else could he take it?

“The magic,” he said, tipping his head toward the plant. “It’s the same. This is your handiwork?” It was only just barely a question, more like he needed to be certain.

This was hardly what I expected, but I wasn’t sure it was an improvement. “Well…yes. I…”

He released my hand and turned to the plant. As he had earlier, he reached out, but this time he did touch it, smoothing a finger along the edge of one velvety black leaf.

The leaf quivered under his hand. At first I thought it was responding to my upset, then I saw how his hand trembled. And I noticed next that the plant _wasn’t_ rustling, growing, shooting up dozens of flowers and generally acting like an ill-mannered dog. It just stood there quietly in its alcove, the way all plants had until recently.

“Remarkable,” he said.

I, too, was thinking it was pretty remarkable, so it didn’t occur to me to wonder what, exactly, he considered so remarkable. Or maybe if it did, I was thinking that he couldn’t believe that someone my age could have produced such a paradigm of excellence in hybridization. Different genera and all that.

I wasn’t getting chewed out, but I was nevertheless feeling uncomfortable. He knew I’d ensorcelled this plant, which might lead to questions of under what circumstance said sorcery occurred, which would lead to all kinds of other questions I’d much prefer not to revisit: Luke, Hux, uncontrollable magic and the whole knotty, miserable mess.

I smiled. “Well, nice to meet you, Kylo.” I offered my hand once more and this time, after the barest hesitation, he took it. “Enjoy the Plant Show.”

He inclined his head again and let my hand slide from his. I was conscious of his eyes on me all the way out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I paraphrased a line in Ursula K. LeGuin's _Eye of the Heron_ in, "Maybe in spite of his pretty-boy looks, Hux was all right. It would be a shame to have to despise him."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's where the meddling relatives come in. Leia and Luke's student, Hux, have the same agenda-- but for completely different reasons.

I wove my way through plants and people, not paying much attention to either one. I kept seeing Kylo’s sadness and desperate restraint, feeling the icy cold of his magic in my right hand.

Why should he affect me like that? It had been nothing, just a glimpse of a private moment, the discomfort of the discovery of my accidental peeping. But what had been the emotion in his voice when he’d said, _You?_

I found myself at the hors d’oeuvre table. Fancy dishes arranged with flatbreads with rolled meats, crackers with spreads, delicate puffs on toothpicks covered the white tablecloth. A bowl of punch and little crystal cups stood at one end.

I stood staring at all of it like I was trying to decipher ancient hieroglyphics when a voice with a smooth English accent said, “Seems you’ve made a conquest.”

I spun—no graceful and controlled turn for me. It was, naturally, Hux. My heart started up like it had never slowed down, I wasn’t quite sure whether from anger, alarm or both. He wasn’t the handsome young man he had been—now he looked sneering and mean.

I drew myself up and gave him my best impression of Mom’s crop-withering glance. I never could do it as well as she can, but oh well.

“What are you talking about?”

“Kylo Ren,” he said. “The Lord of Death himself.”

I turned back to the food. “Go away, Hux. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“No doubt.” His voice dripped with false enlightenment. “Since you prefer _that_ type.”

I rounded on him. I could not believe his gall. “What type would _that_ be, since we’re talking about _types?”_

He grinned. The grin reminded me a lot of Luke at his nastiest and most vindictive. “Quite the necromancer, that one. You know, Rey—or maybe you don’t, since your mother keeps you so secluded. A sorcerer who powers his magic with death.” He leaned close. “You and I together would do much better, I promise,” he whispered. His breath tickled my ear and neck.

I stepped away. “Too bad all the evidence points to the contrary.”

His lips turned down, then he smirked. “Then to show you there’re no hard feelings, I’ll give you a bit of help. How’s that?”

_No thanks_ , I opened my mouth to say, but still smirking, he turned.

He held up two fingers to the waiter by the punch bowl. The waiter dipped out two cups of magenta liquid, each with a frozen raspberry bobbing on top.

Hux took both in one hand. Turning his back to the table so the waiter couldn’t see, he held my eye, raised a hand over one of the cups and made a little swirling motion. Magic sighed, releasing the heady scent of musk.

I scowled. I didn’t know what he’d done, but he couldn’t possibly expect me to drink that. “Hux—”

“Enjoy the party, Rey,” he said and wove away through the people around the tables, carrying the two glasses of punch.

“Hux!”

I started after him, but it seemed like every hole he slipped through closed up in front of me. It wasn’t like I could elbow my way through this bunch of well-dressed strangers. I could just see punch splashed down shimmery dresses and tidbits on toothpicks smeared on expensive suits.

So I basically struggled along like a seal pup in choppy seas, straining to keep Hux’s red head in view. I lost him, but I had a bad feeling I’d better find him again. The quicker the better.

Finally breaking through the press in the middle of the room, I glanced frantically around. There he was, talking to—Kylo Ren.

_Crap_.

Hux was smiling and nodding with perfect ease. Kylo looked as grave as before but didn’t seem to mind the company.

Hux held only one cup of punch. I had a pretty good idea the other was the one in Kylo’s hand.

_Okay_ , I told myself, _don’t panic_. _You don’t even know what the spell is supposed to do_.

Plus Kylo had some heavy-duty magic going on—my hand _still_ tingled. He’d notice any spell on that punch. See, he wasn’t drinking. He was only holding it.

I nibbled a fingernail. My magic was no good for this kind of situation—it didn’t do explosions or bursts of force or suddenly slippery cups. Maybe I should go rushing out and dash the cup from his hand. Sure, I’d make a complete fool of myself, but that wasn’t the point.

But what if that _was_ the point? Wouldn’t Hux love it, both of us dripping with allegedly enchanted punch, bits of broken glass all over the floor that some hotel staffer would have to come and officiously clean up.

Right! Of course! It couldn’t be enchanted, because Kylo would know it, and would’ve thrown the stuff in Hux’s face as quick as you could say, “You blackguard!” Or something like that.

On the other hand, did I really want to take the chance?

My dithering took place behind a rosebush with white blossoms blushing to violet. Women’s voices had been gradually resolving themselves out of the general background noise, but I didn’t dare look.

Then a well-known voice said, “Rey! I’ve been looking everywhere!”

I turned. It was Finn, accompanied by two women. I lost sight of Kylo for a second. When I spotted him again, _he was drinking_.

“Shit!” I hissed through my teeth.

“Bless you,” one of the women said.

Finn peered at me. “Are you okay?”

What a question. Technically, the answer was “yes,” but… That “but” mostly centered around what sort of mischief Hux was up to.

For Finn’s benefit I said I was just fine, while occasionally glancing over at Hux and Kylo. Kylo wasn’t clutching his throat or hunching over and growing lots of hair. He didn’t seem to be behaving oddly (as if I knew him well enough to have any idea what odd would be).  

Turning, Hux met my gaze and raised his glass. I couldn’t tell if it was a mocking salute or if he was talking about me. Either way, Kylo turned, too. I instantly yanked my attention back to Finn and his friends, which was just as well because Finn was in the process of introducing everyone.

Really, what else could I do? Whatever chance I’d had at damage control was gone. Frankly, I was trying hard to convince myself that Hux had just been messing with my head and there’d never been any need for damage control.

So I let them sweep me back into the party, all of us gushing over the fantabulous plants. Although I wasn’t doing it with a particularly easy mind, which irritated me because I knew I’d let Hux get one over on me.

I was still stewing over it when it was time for the formal presentation, and dammit! I was doing it again—letting Hux ruin the evening. I was going to sit down and enjoy this. I refused to think about him again. In fact, I only kept half my vow.

Finn sat beside me. The people filling the many other seats might have been opera-goers waiting for the house lights to go down—leaning heads together to converse quietly, rustling programs, stifling the occasional cough—except instead of sitting in plush theater seats, we were all perched on those tubular steel and industrial fabric chairs hotels provide for this kind of thing.

Finally, a small woman with a crown of dark hair dressed in a flowing, gauzy-looking dress of rich greens and browns stepped up to the podium and said, “Good evening, all. I am Lee Organa of TerraVisions.”

I blinked, squinted, shook my head a little. She looked a lot like—no, _just like_ —Leia. As a matter of fact, she _was_ Leia. Here. At the Plant Show. At the Palace Suites in Modesto.

Questions came piling into my mind. One question, at least, was answered: why all these sorcerers were here.

I didn’t keep track of much of what was said. Plants were rolled up on little draped tables and she talked about them. Then one, very familiar, was rolled forward, one with black leaves and white flowers.

I was glad I’d seen it before. If I hadn’t, I would’ve jumped and gasped now, while I had an audience. This way I could just look properly amazed by its striking appearance.

Leia turned one hand palm up in a graceful gesture, indicating the plant. “ _Pseudocolocasia Albaflora—_ Night’s Crown, a very special creation made for a special person. Certainly, it is why my guest of honor is here with us tonight.”

_Oh, gods_ , I thought. _It’s me._ She’s going to call me up there with that same gesture, and then I…

Well, you know what happens when I’m under pressure.

Leia said, “Please welcome…Kylo Ren.”

She applauded, the audience applauded, Finn and I applauded.

A special creation made for…the guest of honor? But…

Finn leaned over and whispered, “Who the hell is he?”

I shook my head.

Straightening his tie, Kylo walked toward the front of the room slowly enough that I suspected he wanted to be there up about as much as I would have.

I held my breath and watched to see if he was twitching or tugging at his collar (what did that spell do anyway?). He wasn’t. But then, there wasn’t any spell to begin with, was there?

Leia held out both hands in welcome. Just as he reached her, he turned without taking her hands and faced the plant, facing the room in the process. Leia gracefully transformed the gesture into one of someone presenting something unique and amazing.

People, that is, other sorcerers, in the audience muttered together as if Kylo’s presence really was unique and amazing.

Behind me, a woman’s voice whispered, “How can he be here? She must have him shielded. She’s the only one who could.”

Another woman whispered back, “Why? Who is he? I’ve never heard of him.”

“I’m not surprised. I’ll tell you later.”

My ears perked up. What was going on? I’d sensed…something when I’d taken his hand. Had it been magical shielding? But why was it necessary for his presence? _Quite the necromancer, that one_ , Hux had said, but that still didn’t explain.

Kylo raised his hand to the plant, slid one long leaf between a gloved thumb and forefinger. He cleared his throat.

“I’m humbled and honored by such a gift.” The mike picked up his voice, soft and grave and dark, spread it across the room. “You’ve outdone yourself, Lee.  You have given me so much—so much more than I expected. Lovely.”

As he spoke, his gaze swept the audience. I could’ve sworn it lingered in my general vicinity, then Leia spoke and he turned to answer.

Finn leaned over and said, “That was strange. For a second there it looked like he was staring at us.”

“Yeah,” I said, but those questions that had come tumbling down around me earlier were increasingly preoccupying. There were some real coincidences going on here, except that they didn’t seem like coincidences at all.

That seemed to be the grand finale of the presentation. Leia gave a few short closing words, then people around us started talking, getting to their feet, shuffling between the rows of chairs.

“Hey, listen,” I said to Finn. “I want to try to talk to her. You go ahead—it looks like I’ll be waiting a while.” I nodded at the inevitable crush converging on the presenter, in this case, Leia.

Finn shot me a sideways glance, then shrugged. “Okay. I’ll see you.” He followed the crowd filtering its way back into the main room of the plant show.

I wasn’t lying—it did take a while. At last, the courtiers thinned out sufficiently that Leia saw me waiting.

“Rey.” She held out her hands to me exactly as she had to Kylo.

The courtiers faded back like, _Whoa! She’s on a first-name basis with this young person?_

I stood up from my chair, stepped forward and took her hands. _What’s going on?_ I wanted to blurt out, but I said, “The plants are wonderful. I love them.”

“Ah,” she said as if she knew what I hadn’t said. “Please excuse us,” she said to the last, clingiest audience members, all sorcerers.

Judging from the murmurs that had greeted Kylo, they probably had some questions of their own.

Leia walked slowly toward the back of the room. Strange—she wasn’t as short as I remembered. But once the here-and-now becomes optional, I suppose a sorceress’ physical manifestation can change at will.

But that was beside the point. What I really needed to be thinking about was how to broach the subject without sounding confrontational.

“You must feel yourself a victim of theft,” she said, once more anticipating me.

“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “I mean, the plant wasn’t mine to begin with, just something I…” I flapped my hands. How could I keep from claiming ownership?

She smiled. “Something you made. And I have passed off your handiwork as my own.”

There was that. I shrugged. “It would’ve been hard to explain to my friends how I managed to create a plant like that.” Then another coincidence popped into my mind, because this seemed an event styled more for wholesalers and maybe an interested botanist or two. “Um… How many retail nursery owners received invitations to this show?”

“Oh, very few.”

“Like, one?”

 She only gave another of those Mona Lisa smiles.

Of course, there was no need to ask how she knew an invitation sent to Unkar would ensure my attendance—don’t forget, magic was involved. But I did have to ask, “Why?”

She turned to face me. “You were so troubled when I saw you last. I wished you to see the good your magic can do.”

“Thank you. But… Well, it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. Sure, I created something new…” I shrugged again.

We passed through the door into the main room of the Plant Show. Whether by design or accident, we pretty much had this end of the room to ourselves.

Leia began walking again, hands clasped before her, the gauzy fabric of her dress whispering and flowing with each step. The colors seemed to change as I looked, the greens flowing through shades and hues, the browns increasing and diminishing. I’d gone river-rafting a couple of times on the Stanislaus, and the river was like that: the colors of the water deep and mellow or quick and bright, the banks sliding by with trees and vines and lawns.

“It is more than that,” she said at last and glanced at me, a sharp, appraising look. She nodded. “Yes, I think you should know. You see, some time before you and I met, Kylo Ren came to beg a favor of me, something he, for all his great power, could not have. I refused him that favor, but offered him another.” She paused, then said, “It was you who granted it—a flower, living beauty, something he could cherish.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. You—” I was going to say surely she could have created something just as good, but that sounded arrogant.

She inclined her head. “I could have created it, yes. But I learned long ago to allow events to unfold as they will. You came disturbing me with your power. When I saw what that power could do, it seemed only proper that it should be allowed to fulfill the need brought to me.”

I nodded. From an earth-sorceress standpoint, it made sense: let things grow according to their nature. Most natural systems tended to stay in equilibrium better that way, plus you didn’t have to baby them to keep them healthy.

But I couldn’t help wondering…what favor had Kylo asked for that Leia had refused? And if he was so powerful, what had made him seek the aid of another sorcerer—especially one as powerful as Leia?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything goes back to normal ("normal" being a relative term here)-- until Rey encounters a terrifying creature in a mask.

Finn and I dutifully reported in to Unkar on Monday. Finn, not having any personal dramas going on at the time, had kept better notes than I had. He seemed to have memorized the names, breeding and landscape uses of all the plants we saw there. There wasn’t much I could add.

Unkar fixed his small eyes on me. "Did you even go?”

Finn grinned. “She was busy breaking another heart, Unkar. The guest of honor, no less. He had it bad, too—wherever Rey was, that’s where he was looking.”

Shock—or panic—shot through me. “ _What?”_ This was the first I’d heard of it.

He laughed. “Come on, Rey. I know you’re not as naive as you pretend to be.”

“I _swear_ —”

“All right,” Unkar said, waving his big mitt of a hand. “Save the soap operas for girls’ night out. Tell me about the plants.”

And that was the last either of us (Finn and I, that is—Unkar didn’t care) talked about it.

Not, however, the last I thought about it, not to mention worrying about that spell Hux had put (or not put) on the punch. I hadn’t told Mom what happened, mostly because she would have invited Hux over for supper and then chopped him up in a stew and served him to Luke.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not much. Trust me. Although in principle I didn’t really object, I knew if Mom went off, no matter how well justified, I’d end up feeling guilty and responsible. I’d think I should have been mature and competent enough to deal with my own problems without running to mommy.

Anyway, I spent the next few weeks blithely thinking everything had gone back to normal, wildly growing vegetation, panting, amorous couples and all. Hux was history. Luke didn’t darken our doorstep, a curious circumstance given his earlier persistence. This should have warned me that all was not well and good.

There were other clues, if I’d only bothered to pay attention: The black drone I caught once or twice buzzing around wherever I happened to be. The strange dead patches in the grass at our house, like footprints. The dead patches might’ve been webworms or cinch bugs; anyway, when I tutted over them, the grass happily grew back, so it wasn’t a big deal.

Such non-mysteries didn’t enter the picture when one of those last-gasp heat waves rolled in around the middle of September, when it’s ninety-something, the kids are running around in their back-to-school shorts and there isn’t a yellow leaf in sight.

Finn and I were frantically watering for the third time that day. Thankfully, Unkar didn’t have a problem with short overalls, but both of us were still drippy. We didn’t deign to squirt each other but weren’t above spraying ourselves with the hoses from time to time. It wasn’t enough.

I had two words for the problem: “Tuolumne Reservoir.”

Finn blew a breath through his lips and nodded. “Straight after work.”

“Done,” I said.

Most of the reservoirs are on the east side of the Valley, in the Sierra foothills. Down come the rivers from the mountains only to meet dams on their way to the San Joaquin. The higher ones are usually flood control and hydroelectric projects, the lower for irrigation. The latter tend to make better swimming lakes since they aren’t as cold and deep and there aren’t usually as many maniacs in ski boats roaring around. Plus, even though they’re a way from where we lived, they weren’t as far as the big lakes higher up.

So we still had some afternoon left by the time Finn idled his truck down to a likely-looking spot by the shore.

It was a weekday, which meant we had the whole inlet to ourselves—nobody to stare at us for swimming in our work clothes. We’d done just that for a while and were leaning back on our elbows in the grass, watching the sun get all orange and blobby in the haze of Valley hydrocarbons, smoke and field dust, and feeling pretty content.

“Think we ought to head home?” Finn asked.

I tilted my head to one side, considering. “We’ve still got some daylight left. Let’s take a walk.”

These weren’t real hills here, but the land wasn’t Valley-flat, either. We wandered up a swell of land to see the lake stretching off coppery and crinkled in the late light, then dipped down again with a view only of the next rise, the liquid blue-green of the evening sky and a few black, spiky-looking trees. With the variation of water level, most of the trees were dead, but a few on higher ground owned a branch or two valiantly struggling along.

We were skirting a muddy patch, evidence of the lake’s pre-irrigation release level, when Finn said, “Look at that.”

I shaded my eyes against the slanting light. “What?”

“That.” He pointed. “See? That black thing. Like that plant at the Plant Show.”

I laughed, but sure enough, there was something black underneath one of the trees. “It’s just another dead tree,” I said. “A little one.”

He shook his head. “No, it looks just like that plant. See the leaves?” He turned away from the shoreline and started tramping inland.

I followed him. “Come on, Finn. It’s just a weed, then. What would that plant be doing out here?”

He shrugged. “You’re probably right. But it sure looks like it.”

In our shorts and shoes without socks, both of us stepped carefully through the weeds, dead and scratchy at summer’s end. The closer we came to the plant, damned if it didn’t seem he was right.

Then we were standing right next to it, staring in disbelief: _Pseudocolocacia Albaflora_ , Night’s Crown.

It didn’t rustle or unfurl new shoots or buds as I watched. It just sat there, a fountain of leaves turned perfectly black by the low, reddish light.

Something felt _so_ not right about this.  I looked around.

So did Finn. “There’s more.”

The top of another black clump peeked up from behind a screen of weeds on higher ground. He marched up the little fold of land where we stood.

“Come on—we’d better check them out. If it’s spread like this, it must be highly invasive.”

Oh, gods. Leave it to me to create something that spread like the locust of weeds.

I started after him, dry weeds crunching under my feet. “You think they…escaped?”

“I’m guessing this area isn’t part of a landscaping project.”

I suppose this meant slinking to Leia and telling her what was going on, something I definitely didn’t look forward to. She’d wanted to show me the good my power could do, and now—

The world shifted a little, just a sort of slightly tipsy sway. _Leia!_ I thought for a second, because it felt a lot like that, when she’d opened the way between worlds to make her appearance. Then I realized it wasn’t anything nearly so alarming.

Finn flung out a hand as if he’d lost his balance. “Hey. Earthquake. Did you feel it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just a little one.”

For a true Californian, anything below a five on the Richter scale doesn’t warrant more than passing notice. Really. You can always tell newcomers to the state because they get so freaked out over earthquakes.

We were cupped in a sort of hollow between a couple of hills not much more than twice our height. The lake was behind us, out of sight. Twilight filled the place, seeming dimmer after the sunset glare on the water.

Both of us stopped, looking around. Fountains of dark leaves dotted the ground, here, there, where they had no business being. Somewhere behind us, a bird cried, a strange call I didn’t recognize. Finn turned and started up the nearest hill. I paused, looking back toward the sound before starting after him.

The ground started jerking around. Above me, Finn yelled. I hit the ground on my side, jarring my elbow and shoulder. It felt like an invisible force had grabbed hold of me, dragging me down toward the lowest part of the hollow. I screamed as my scrabbling fingers clawed furrows in the dirt. Dust clogged the air, along with the smell of dead weeds and another smell, one of broken roots, a smell as sharp as blood.

“Rey!” Finn shouted. He lurched down the hill toward me.

Suddenly, everything stopped. The shaking ground fell still. At the top of the rise, Finn froze, his eyes wide with fear, his mouth open on a yell.

Panting and shaking, I pushed myself up. Whatever had gripped me seemed to have let go. I scrambled to my feet. “Finn?”

He didn’t answer—didn’t even move. Dread breathed cold prickles down my back.

Something was behind me. I could feel it. Something I really, really didn’t want to see. Every instinct screamed, _Don’t look! Just run!_

I couldn’t help it—I turned.

A huge figure all in black towered there not three feet away. A mask with chrome rings around the eyes stared down at me. A black cloak swirled around booted feet. It didn’t speak, didn’t move. I gasped and began to turn and run, and a black-gloved hand rose, reaching for me.  

It was the last thing I saw.

* * *

I blinked my eyes open to darkness. No, not darkness—a vast, black space. I was lying on something soft and narrow—a couch? A cushioned bench? For just an instant, I was confused.

Then everything rushed back—the earthquake, Finn, the towering monster in the mask. I jolted upright, flung myself up—

And promptly fell on the floor.

“Rey,” a soft, dark voice said. “Don’t be afraid.”

Gasping, I looked up.

Kylo Ren stood about arm’s-length away, one hand outstretched as if to help me up. He looked like I remembered from the Plant Show—lush, wavy black hair, black goatee—but now he wore a dark Henley shirt and black jeans.

I scrambled to my feet. I felt a cold floor against one and realized I’d lost a shoe somewhere along the line. “Where am I?”

A globe of white light hung over his shoulder—more than one globe did. In fact, a whole line of them ran off into the distance, almost like streetlights, except the light was much softer, like moonlight. And streetlights have poles to hold them up whereas these had…nothing. Everything else was black—the walls, the floor, the scant furniture. It all gave the impression of a very austere foyer in a very large house.

He looked around, as if seeing the place for the first time, like when you invite guests over and see all the cobwebs in the corners and spots on the carpet you missed.

“This is my home.” Bitterness or resentment twisted his mouth, then it became composed again. “You’re my guest. Welcome.”

“What happened? Where’s Finn?” I looked around frantically. _Where’s the creature in the mask?_

Kylo took a step closer, gazing at me out of his dark eyes. They seemed even darker here under the light of the strange white globes. His magic prickled like snowflakes, delicate and cold on my skin, then an instant later, warm.

“Your friend?” he said. “I assume he’s well enough.”

“But—” I fell back a step, shaking my head. _I’m dreaming_ , I told myself. It was too weird to be anything else.

He closed the space between us again. “Come. Let me take you someplace more comfortable.” He half-turned, indicating the way with a gesture.

I couldn’t shake that horrible dissociated feeling, like I was a body going through the moves while _I_ was somewhere else.

“I have to get back. Finn—”

_Finn shouting, running toward me._ He’d be in his truck by now, babbling on his phone to Mom. “They’ll think something happened to me.”

Kylo still held out his arm in invitation. “It can’t be avoided. Please, come.”

_Can’t be avoided?_ I wanted to bang my fists on my head: _Wake up!_ What was wrong with me? Had I been that badly scared?

Kylo was still waiting patiently. I looked around once more— _nope, definitely not at Tuolumne Reservoir anymore_ —and decided I didn’t have a whole lot of options here.

I started off in the direction he indicated, half-shod, the smooth floor icy on my bare foot.

Kylo fell into step beside me, a huge shadow walking as silently as…well, Death. My own mismatched footsteps echoed in high, dark places, whispering.

He gestured, and a pair of doors at least twice my height swung inward, also silently. As the light caught their surfaces, I saw a stern, bearded face carved on them, half of the face on each door. Walking through them felt like being swallowed.

The floor turned to marble, also black, inlaid with silver in strange, complex patterns. The magic in them tugged and nudged at me, but distantly, as if something lay between me and the magic. I had a feeling if Kylo hadn’t been beside me, it would’ve carried me off…where? I glanced around. To one of those three other doors, all closed like corpse’s mouths.

As it was, though, we were headed toward the door the magic wanted. It swung open and light spilled out.

If the white globes had been moons, this light was the sun’s, brilliant and golden, although the air was still cold. The floor was green marble inlaid with some yellow metal—brass? Gold? I wasn’t real up on my metals. I blinked and perked up a little. A corridor stretched ahead, carpeted with a fancy Oriental runner and lined with more closed doors and tall, curtained alcoves.

I reached out and parted a heavy, brocaded curtain as we walked by. A window lay behind it, of course. Then I saw it wasn’t a real window, but only painted mullions with what looked like an English countryside with hills and trees and grazing sheep and a water meadow painted between. I snatched my hand back.

I think I would’ve bolted right then, but Kylo stopped, opened a door and said, “Here.”

A scent of flowers wafted out. That was the only thing that kept me from spinning right out into the ozone, because believe me, I think I was close to losing it.

I cautiously stepped past him into a pretty sitting room, all done in cream and lavender and green. A comfortable-looking upholstered chair with a footstool and a little side table sat by a hearth where a peachwood-scented fire burned. Two low bookshelves flanked the mantle. On the mantle, the table, the tops of the bookshelves, cut crystal bowls brimmed with dried lavender, rose petals, gardenia petals, the source of the flowery scent.

Kylo indicated an archway on the far side of the room. “Your bedroom is through there, and a bathroom. You can wash up.”

I stood staring with my mouth open. I’m sure I looked like trailer trash with my dirty overalls and one bare foot and tangled hair straggling half out of its bun.

“Uh…thank you,” I said. What was going through my head was, _wait, wait…_ I took a breath. It shook, which didn’t help my confidence. “But I have to go. Home.”

He crossed to the door, rested one hand on the knob. His face was as expressionless as a judge’s. “I hope you’ll be comfortable. Tell me if you need anything else.”

He stepped through the door, and it closed gently behind him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey discovers the truth of her kidnapping and how Hux's spell was involved. She's sure everything will be straightened out once she explains to Kylo. Not.

I just stood there, staring at the closed door. I didn’t hear Kylo’s footsteps outside in the hallway, only the voice of the fire, whispering. The scent of burning peach wood and lavender and gardenia and rose curled around me, a smell of remembered sunlight and summer air.

Leaning down to take off my other shoe, I still didn’t feel anything at all. Then all at once, the terror hit that I should’ve felt since that—that _monster_ rose up behind me. Shivering so hard my teeth were chattering, so hard it hurt, I crumpled to the floor and curled up tight, hugging my knees to my chest,.

I guess it must’ve been shock. I don’t know how long I sat there, but the fire on the hearth burned lower before I managed to get a handle on myself.

At last, I pushed myself upright. The good news was I felt a little more myself; enough, at least, to get up and go investigate the bedroom. It was just as gorgeous as the sitting room without being overwhelming. The décor had lots of green with splashes of marigold-yellow and fuchsia and pansy-violet.

Curious, I opened the closet door. It was full of clothes. Drawstring pants, jeans, comfortable cotton blouses. Just the kind of things I liked.

Backing up as if they would leap out and attack me, I went cold.

This was not good. This was very definitely and most certainly not good. Before anything went any further, I’d better find out how very Not Good it was. Taking an unsteady breath, I carefully shut the closet, turned and hurried to the door.

I had one bad moment where I was afraid to try it. But the knob turned when I twisted it, the door opened, and the hall with the Oriental runner and brocade curtains covering the (nonexistent) windows appeared.

For a second, I thought it was empty, then I saw a woman standing in the next curtain-alcove. Her head was turned as if she was gazing out the faux window.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for Kylo Ren. Could you please point me in the right direction?”

She didn’t answer but drifted toward me, her face still averted. At first I thought she was ignoring me, then I realized with a start she wasn’t there. Which is to say, as an earth sorceress, I could tell that what stood with me in that hallway wasn’t alive.

I looked at the softly flowing skirt, the face turned away and hidden behind a fall of hair and saw…a shade. An apparition. A ghost.

I came that close to jumping back into my room and slamming the door, but that would’ve been unspeakably rude. Plus she paused, as if to make sure I’d follow, then glided down the corridor to the left, the way I’d come with Kylo. This appeared helpful, so I followed.

Back we went through the door into the vast room with its magical traffic-control floor. This time I had the sense it wanted to push me back, but following my silent guide, I ignored it. The set of doors she led me to were, of course, black, but these were carved with a cross-eyed face with pointy teeth and a stuck-out tongue, like a Chinese or Indian demon.

The doors clanged, yawned open and we stepped (or _I_ stepped— _she_ drifted) into a vast, black hall.

Troughs of writhing flames lined a wide causeway, casting a jerky red light. Perspective made it look as though they converged at the base of stairs as steep as those on a Mayan sacrificial temple. Magic and angles of silver inlay in the floor pointed inescapably forward, and forward I went behind my ghostly guide, toward the dark figure seated on a massive pyramidal throne at the top of those steps.

He stood—of course it was a he, with that height and those shoulders—and the bloody firelight played over a helmet with alarming rings of chrome around the eyes, a black cloak and gloves and boots and surcoat.

“Rey.” The voice droned ominously from the helmet.

It was the monster, the thing, the _creature_ from the lake. I sucked a breath through my teeth and started slowly backing up, the way you’re supposed to when you encounter a large and dangerous predator.

Black-gloved hands came up and lifted the helmet off.

Kylo’s face appeared over a high collar. I stopped short, suddenly dizzy. He set the helmet on the seat of the throne, strode down the steps like they weren’t six inches deep and a foot high and came forward, cloak billowing out behind him. The flames lining the walkway died down until they were cheerful and rosy, like the fire in my room.

“You,” I whispered.

He approached until he stood in front of me, just as dark and towering as the creature had been— _was_ —

“Y-you…” I stammered again.

Kylo turned to the shade and said, “Thank you, Bea.”

She nodded and drifted back out.

I went from terrified to furious in under four seconds. “You _kidnapped_ me!” It came out as a shriek that echoed through the throne room.

“I brought you here to my realm,” he said calmly.

“By knocking me out and carrying me off!”

“You were frightened.”

Five or six outraged responses clogged my throat, so I just stood there sputtering.

He swept his hand downward and the Dark Lord getup disappeared, replaced by the Henley shirt and jeans.

“I was working,” he explained.

He started to offer his hand, but then only gestured to a couple of Queen Anne chairs that hadn’t been there a second ago. I eyed them, and he stood waiting for me to sit. The perfect gentleman. Right. Except for part where he kidnapped me. I finally dropped into a chair with a huff.

He seated himself. “Bea will be a companion to you. Are you comfortable with her?”

_Companion?_ I opened my mouth to say, then stopped.

A kidnapping. Beautiful rooms lovingly prepared. A closet-full of clothes specially chosen for me. A _companion_. Something inside me shriveled into a small, cold knot. I suddenly realized what was going on.

Hux’s spell.

_To show you there’re no hard feelings, I’ll give you a bit of help_ , he’d said.

Now I knew exactly what kind of help he’d given me. _Oh, no_ , I thought. _Oh, no, no, no_ …

“Um…” I said, newly cautious. “She’s a little quiet, but just fine, thanks.”

He made a gesture, one I interpreted as regret. “The adage about the dead not speaking is true. What made them who they were has moved on, leaving behind only a shadow. A memory. Would you rather I conjure something else?” He looked away. “Living company isn’t possible here.”

_Why not?_ I didn’t quite dare ask. I crossed my legs in a simulation of ease but felt anything but easy. Even with the small, cheerful fires, the throne room was forbidding. Not to mention the entire situation.

I decided to keep things positive. “Actually, since you’ll be taking me home, I won’t need a companion.”

His black brows drew together. “You’re unhappy here?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said quickly. “The room is beautiful, and I’ll be glad for the chance to rest and wash up.” He was probably wondering why I was still all bedraggled. Well, there were more important things to deal with right now. “My mom would freak if she saw me like this.” I plucked at my muddy coveralls, wiggled my bare toes. “But if I don’t show up soon to prove I’m still all in one piece, she’ll really be upset, you know?”

 He listened patiently to this speech then said, “Shall I send a simulacrum of you? I can create one that will convince her.”

My stomach made a funny little dip. I folded my hands over my middle, hopefully to keep it still. “Um, no thanks. The genuine article will do.”

He had a very intense, unsettling gaze. “Is your mother’s concern your only objection to staying?”

Normally, I would’ve said, _Hell, no!_ and proceeded to detail the many reasons I wanted to go home, now, please, preferably before I got here, thank you. In this particular case, however, I re-crossed my legs, groping frantically for a tactful reply.

“Your home is very grand and all, but… You _kidnapped_ me, Kylo. And I’m an earth sorceress. And there’s nothing alive here—at least nothing I’ve seen so far.”

Some dark emotion flashed in his eyes. “No,” he said. “Nothing alive. Nothing but me—and you.”

_Kylo came to beg a favor of me_ , Leia had said. _A flower, living beauty, something he could cherish_.

_Oh, damn_ , I thought.

“So you see why I have to go back.” I said a little desperately, like of _course_ he would.

“No, I don’t.” He stood, turned away. “What I see is that you don’t _wish_ to stay.”

“Well…” I cleared my throat, trying to decide the best way to approach this. “It’s a little gloomy. For someone like me, you understand.”

He turned back. “You can be happy here,” he said softly. “Tell me what else you want. Anything.”

I shook my head and opened my mouth to argue again, but he said, “Watch.”

He raised a hand and the black throne room and the fires disappeared. I sat in a little white wrought iron chair with flowered cushions. Sunlight glanced through a towering confection of glass panes onto a cultivated jungle of tropical flowers. On either side of me, where the troughs of fire had been, water murmured down a series of stepped waterfalls. It was bright, beautiful, and entirely illusory.

“Kylo—”

“Wait.”

The conservatory flicked into a large room with small curly sofas and chairs in white and gold damask. Musicians played chamber music and fancy-dressed men and women talked and laughed. I moved my hand and something flashed. A diamond (I somehow doubted it was CZ) the size of a pea perched on my finger—my ring finger. On my left hand. I shot to my feet.

“This might be better?” he said.

The room turned into a barn with hay strewn on the floor and the fancy people into Mexican men and women. Mariachis played a lively tune, and the men swung the women in laughing circles. The diamond was still on my finger.

I squeezed my eyes closed. “Stop.”

The mariachi music snapped off and the smell of hay wisped away, but I kept my eyes closed. My breath sounded loud and fast in the sudden silence.

“I can give you anything you want, Rey,” he said.

I searched my fingers with my left thumb. There was no ring. I opened my eyes, and the throne room was back.

Kylo stood behind his chair, gripping the back. “Anything,” he said, “but send you away.”

I looked away from the pleading and desperation on his face and sat down again. “Is it because of the plants?” I knew that wasn’t it but grabbed it and hung on. “The ones I made? We saw them at the lake, growing all over the place. I know I did something wrong—”

“Rey,” he broke in. “You did nothing wrong. But the plants…”

I glanced up.

He drew a quick, swelling breath. “They showed me what’s possible.”

My throat closed. “What?” I could only manage a whisper. “What’s possible?” I was still pretending not to know.

He sat down again and leaned toward me. “You. Here. With me.”

My heart started trying to beat its way out of my chest—or up my throat, whichever came first. _Okay, okay, stay calm_ , I told myself. _You know what’s going on here._

I swallowed, took a breath. “This isn’t your fault.” My voice wasn’t entirely steady, but I went on, “It’s a spell—”

“Spell?” He sat back.

“Yes, and the spell is because of me, because someone wanted to get back at me, so he…”

He watched me like I was about to unveil some lost and hidden knowledge.

“Well…he bewitched you. Hux did. When he gave you that punch.”

Now Kylo was going to ask how bewitching _him_ got back at _me_ , and it’d all be worse than before.

His lips twitched in the hint of a smile. That was more alarming than the intent stare. “No sorcerer can bespell me. Not without my knowledge.”

I knotted my hands together. “I didn’t think it could work either, but… Kylo, you’ve kidnapped me. I know you couldn’t help it. The spell and all. And if it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be a spell and you never would’ve done anything like this, because you don’t seem like a carrying-off-the-damsel kind of guy to me. So when you send me home, I’ll say it was all a mistake. I’ll tell them there was an earthquake and you saved me, and everything will be fine.”

He didn’t seem about to say anything like, _I understand now, of course I’ll send you home_. Getting more desperate, I added, “Okay?”

Shaking his head, he said, “There is no mistake.”

His ungloved hands were clasped between his knees. Unclasping them, he turned one palm-up for a long moment, then slowly extended it. Cautiously, I put mine in his much larger hand. I flinched. The sensation of his magic was like before—a shock of icy cold, then spreading warmth.

“Do you see?” he said, almost whispering. “You take my hand.” He withdrew his again a little too quickly. “I touched the plant you made.”

“But the spell—”

“The only magic belongs to you—all you can do, all you are.”

“But…” My brain was like a car crash, bits flying everywhere. “I can’t stay here.” I shook my head. “I’ll die.” My voice came out very small.

“You will not die.” He said it like a finality, a pronouncement of doom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about calling Bea "Bebe," but it seemed a little too obvious, somehow. 😉


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo tries to make Rey more comfortable in his realm. When she decides to try to break Hux's spell. everything blows up.

I’d like to say I was plucky enough to go immediately to Plan B. I wasn’t. I meekly accompanied Bea back to my rooms. When I walked into my bedroom, something was different. Brighter. Then I saw what it was.

Sunlight angled across the bed from French doors that hadn’t been there before. I dashed across the room, ran into the wash of brilliant, golden light and flung open the doors. Past a small flagstone porch, a dell full of green grass and arching white oaks stretched away. A woodpecker drilled somewhere in the distance. I smelled the musk of fallen oak leaves and the fragrance of grass.

And sensed not a single cell of life.

I don’t know what happened, but I went off. Maybe I was sick of being scared and overwhelmed. Maybe I just plain didn’t have the guts to go off on who I _should_ have.

“Damn you!” I yelled. “Did you think you could trick me?”

I slashed magic at the seductive illusion. It didn’t even flicker. That made me even madder. I stalked out the French doors, across the porch and stomped through the grass. It felt like real grass, cool and slightly damp. The sun was warm like real sunlight. I reached an oak and pounded on the trunk. It scraped my fist like real oak bark.

Yanking at the front of my filthy overalls, I shouted, “Look! This is real.” Flakes of mud showered down. “Real dirt! Real _me!_ Not like this…this bribery! If it was real, everything would be _growing like the world was about to end _!”__

My voice cracked at the end, and I burst into tears. I sank down into the not-grass and pressed my face to my knees.

I didn’t want to see an illusion so powerfully wrought it would’ve convinced almost anybody but an earth sorcerer. I didn’t want to think about the sorcerer who was capable of creating something like this, who’d made up his mind that I was to be…

No. I didn’t want to think about that, either. So I just sat there, hugged my knees and sobbed until I thought I’d either throw up or pass out.

Eventually, I was reduced to gulps and sniffles, more from exhaustion than anything else. Wiping my nose and eyes, I raised my head. And started.

Bea sat beside me in the grass, arms linked around knees, her skirt a spill of shimmery translucence in the grass. As always, her face was turned away as if she were gazing across the meadow. She didn’t speak, didn’t touch, didn’t even look at me, but her presence was somehow comforting. Even if she wasn’t alive.

“Bea,” I said.

Her head turned a little toward me, but not enough that I could see her face.

I felt totally drained, like I’d worked in a hot field all day. I just wanted to go back inside, crawl into bed and hide from everything. If I’d been completely alone, I might’ve done it. Trapped in this plane where nothing grew, I might’ve slipped into the black waters of despair, stopped eating, stopped speaking, stopped moving. Turned into—a ghost.

I reached to touch her hand. I didn’t meet flesh, but something else: a crackle of energy that resisted the pressure of my fingers, a sense of dense coldness.

According to Hux, Kylo was supposed to be a necromancer.

“Is that what happened to you before you died?” I asked. “Did Kylo drag you here for his magic?”

I thought of his fingers trembling over the leaf of a Night’s Crown. No. That was wrong. I couldn’t imagine him hurting anything, much less any _one_. Maybe spirits, like Bea, were what his magic drew power from. Besides, hadn’t he promised I wouldn’t die?

Bea’s head bowed slowly, as if from some sorrowful memory (did ghosts have memories?). Then she flowed upright.

I found myself on my feet too, as if she’d taken me by the hand and pulled me up. She moved toward the house, and I followed.

The French doors to my room were one of a series of doors on a four-story Mediterranean-style house. Mansion, actually. Since stucco and tile and wrought iron aren’t alive, I couldn’t tell for sure, but I suspected this was more impressively detailed illusion.

She drifted through the French doors. She paused to open the door to the hallway, although this may just have been for my benefit. We turned right down the hallway, the opposite from the way I’d been before.

Of course the next question that came to mind was where she was taking me.

“Bea, I hope you know I really don’t have much of an urge to see Kylo right now, if that’s where you’re going.”

Without pausing, she shook her head.

I hesitated, then followed her. Walking through this…house, place, plane was much like walking through Leia’s. One minute we were walking along a hallway (with real windows now, through which not-real sunlight poured), and the next the hallway sort of petered out, like someone’s interest or imagination had failed and stranded us in a jumble of rooms and ill-defined spaces.

The house illusion finally gave up the ghost, so to speak, and we were walking across the face of a dim, barren slope under a slate-colored sky. I shivered. I had a feeling this was the true nature of this plane, this chill, still deadness. The pop and crunch of small stones under my feet made the only sound.

How could Kylo bear to live in a place like this? Why would he even want to? More to the point, _what sort_ of person would choose to live in such a place?

This cheerful thought sat on my shoulder all the way across one slope and up the face of another. I was irresistibly reminded of the slopes Finn and I had trooped up and down by the lake. And Bea and I came to a little dell just like the one Finn and I had found. It, too, was filled…

With Night’s Crown, all in brilliant white bloom.

I stopped. Bea pointed down. _More illusion_ , I told myself, but I was already headed down that hill, because I knew it wasn’t. That sunny, green dell with its oak trees and woodpecker had been fake. But this dim hollow under a blank, dreary sky held real living, growing things. On the awful, sterile-smelling air, I smelled a scent of citrus and honey and rainfall. I ran down the hill and into the middle of the plants.

The way I felt while surrounded by those plants should’ve made them crowd around me like groupies. They just stood there like so many diamond-studded crowns, too dignified for such vulgar behavior.

I touched their leaves, cool and velvety, stooped and probed the ground around their roots. It was real, moist earth in this place of bare, lifeless rock. Brought in, likely, then carefully watered. It reminded me of a pretty bedroom and sunny French doors.

I stood up quickly, brushing leaves. Their rustling sounded just as loud in the silence as my footsteps. At least twenty Night’s Crowns grew around me. All were blooming, new leaves furled like soft, black banners at the bases of the flower stalks.

But not a trace of the crazy growth other plants put on in my presence. Okay, granted, they weren’t getting a lot of light and the gods knew the health of the beneficial bacteria in the soil here, but the plants at the lake and at the Plant Show hadn’t grown wildly, either. I frowned. Yet they sure had at Leia’s. I’d propagated, sown and grown seedlings in the space of an hour. What was the difference between then and the other times?

I looked around. Here I was standing in a garden somewhere in the middle of this bleak plane of existence asking questions. A few minutes ago, I was ready to fold up and put myself away somewhere.

My magic needed living things. All alone, I’d probably wither away. With Kylo around to fill that gap, okay, I might not actually die (although as far as I was concerned, that was arguable), but I definitely needed more life in order to feel myself.

I found a small plant, knelt and pushed my fingers into the soil around its roots. In a few minutes, I had a nice rootball on the ground beside me. Now all I needed was some burlap.

Bea drifted toward me, sank down and held out a fold of her skirt.

“Oh, Bea,” I said, because surrounded by glorious life, I’d forgotten all about what wasn’t alive. And what wasn’t alive had pulled me back from the edge of an abyss. I touched her hand again, that skin of static energy, that flesh of cold. “Thank you.”

* * *

The plant, growing in a bowl of Mexican pottery splashed with bright yellow and blue and orange, really helped my mental state. I’d even managed to drag my filthy, lake-water-smelling self into the bathroom, fill the Roman-style tub with hot water and lavender-and-vanilla-scented bath bubbles and climb in.

I have to admit I was nervous about undressing, but the bathroom door had a lock. Not that any lock would stop a sorcerer worthy of the name, but it was a considerate gesture.

I wasn’t reconciled to my situation by any means, but if I felt inclined to dissolve into tears or hide in bed with the covers pulled over my head, I had only to stroke the plant’s leaves and the black feeling winding itself around my heart would dwindle.

Sitting on the floor in front of the French doors, I was doing just that. It was “afternoon” “outside.” I didn’t look at the “sun.” It only enraged and scared me by turns, the first because it wasn’t real, the second because an illusion that even behaved like the real thing was extremely impressive.

Let me put it this way. Except for Leia, I didn’t know of any sorcerer who could manage such a feat, and I wasn’t sure about even Leia.

So anyway, I was in an uncertain frame of mind when someone knocked on the door. Since I didn’t exactly expect a lot of visitors, I knew who it was.

I kept right on sitting on the floor, then thought, _Well, okay. At least he’s knocking_. I got up and answered it.

Kylo, of course, stood outside. “Rey,” he said. “Are you well? You seemed distressed when you left…”

I opened my mouth to say, “What did you expect?” but he crowded me backward and stepped into the room.

Anybody else under any other circumstances, I would’ve said, “ _Excuse_ me? _”_ But with _this_ person under _these_ circumstances, I stiffened in an instant of white panic, flinching away like I expected him to attack me.

Ridiculous overreaction, I know, but I was still thinking of that damned spell of Hux’s. And Kylo had, let’s not mince words here, carried me off. What else might he do under the thrall of a spell cast by a sex magician?

But he only strode past me to the little Night’s Crown perched on its stool in front of the French doors. I let out a breath.

He touched a white, ruffled petal, and I abruptly remembered the first time I’d seen him, at the plant show, his hand trembling over a leaf. This time his touch was gentle, almost loving. The shrinking reluctance was gone.

“You found them,” he said.

“Bea showed them to me.”

He turned. “Bea. Why?”

I wasn’t too keen to admit I’d been on crying jags. On the other hand, guilt might serve to advance my cause.

I folded my arms. “I’m not the sort of creature that adapts well to captivity.”

He flinched. “Captivity? You’re free to go wherever you wish.”

“Except—” I began angrily.

“Come.” He held out a hand. “Let me show you my realm.”

I didn’t want to see his realm, especially not in the company of an irrationally enamored sorcerer. But he seemed calm and reasonable, and frankly, I wanted to make sure he stayed that way.

He opened the door for me and led the way to the left, pausing when he opened the door to the black hall with its four carved doors.

“I’ve encorcelled this room to direct those who enter to certain doors. May I give you a token that will allow you to cross it freely?”

I shrugged and said, “Sure.”

He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and produced…

Oh. A ring.

I took it. It was gold with a blue stone, not too big, aquamarine or blue topaz. Or—ulp—blue diamond? I thought about testing it on an unobtrusive piece of glass somewhere.

“Um…thanks.”

So what was I supposed to do? Ask if he didn’t have something more platonic, like a coin I could put in my pocket?

He stood looking down at me while I held the ring and wondered if I should put _it_ in my pocket. I finally tried it on my right hand. Of course, it only fit the ring finger, but at least the right ring finger was better than the left. Although not by much.

I stepped onto the floor with its silver inlay. The magic flowed around me as if I were a rock and it a stream. I studied the doors: the one we’d just stepped through, the one through which I’d entered the first time, and the one with the demon-face, which led to Kylo’s throne room. The fourth door bore a carving of an armored figure holding a bared sword.

So where did that one go?

Kylo swept a hand around the vast, echoing space. “You may go where you wish, but I would discourage you from visiting me in my throne room again.”

Uh-huh. “Why?”

He remained silent for a few paces, then said, “What I do there isn’t pleasant.”

I bet it wasn’t. So then what, exactly, did a necromancer do? Raid morgues or slaughterhouses for working material? I swallowed. I couldn’t think of anything more the opposite of what I did.

My lack of reply to this statement sounded loud as the echo of my footsteps. When we finally reached the door carved with the stern, bearded man, I was grateful when Kylo spoke.

“Did you know that rivers flow here?”

“No. What I saw was…dry.”

“Life can’t exist without water,” he chided.

I’m not sure why, but this irritated me. “You said nothing lived here. Except you.”

“And you,” he added.

I refrained from pointing out that I did not _live_ here, I was a prisoner.

“What about the plants? The Night’s Crown. Why didn’t you tell me about those?”

Again that silence. I studied the white globes of light hanging like moons in the air. Strange. So much of this place struck me as a stage set to shock and awe visitors. But according to Kylo, there were no visitors. No, wait. He’d only said no one _lived_ here, because he’d just talked about the floor directing “those who enter.” So who visited? More to the point, how did they leave again?

When he finally answered my question, I’d almost forgotten what I’d asked.

“It might have seemed that I was collecting things of yours.” He darted a glance at me. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”

 _Then why the hell did you drag me here to begin with?_ Once more, I bit my tongue. If only he weren’t so grave and gentle and concerned about my feelings. No, I take that back.

So it ended up being another of those uncomfortable silences. The white globe-moons fell behind. The light didn’t diminish, but gradually turned ruddy. The temperature was going up, and the air had an acrid tinge, too, something I instinctively knew to be hostile to me and what I did.

I faltered. “What’s that?”

“The River of Fire,” he answered. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not _afraid_. But you said water.” I was getting _way_ too many surprises here.

“Of course,” he said quickly. “You don’t want to see this?” This wasn’t said plaintively, but in a tone of perfect politeness.

It made me feel like a whiny kid. “It’s just that my magic is screaming to get the hell away from here. And I can’t breathe.”

Realization showed on his face. “I’m sorry.”

He gestured and the poisonous sense vanished. I might’ve been strolling along the seashore, surrounded by the tang of salt air. I drew a breath as if I’d been holding it too long.

“Better?” he asked.

I took another breath. “Yes. Much.” Then added, “Thanks.”

Craggy rocks rose all around, with a sheer face looming up to the right. The River of Fire was beautiful, in an awe-inspiring sort of way. A firefall of lava spilled down the cliff with a dull, low-frequency seethe, then crawled across the heaved and rumpled terrain. Heat waves shimmered like transparent veils.

I could see why my magic had reacted like it had: this was definitely not a habitable ecosystem. I was pretty sure even pyrophilic—heat-loving—bacteria wouldn’t survive here.

We turned to the left. The River of Fire wound off somewhere into the distance—distance, I was learning, being a relative thing here. Or maybe Kylo was just moving us around by magic while we only seemed to be walking in the normal way.

Anyway, the land changed a lot more than I’d expect from twenty minutes or so of walking, becoming flatter, gentler, although not in the character of any land I knew. My instincts told me this should’ve been a much greener place than California. Certainly the river we came to was larger. In California, we’re used to rivers you can throw a stone across if you have a good arm, not something whose far bank was veiled in mist.

Or was it mist? It seemed to be moving around an awful lot.

“The River of Woe,” Kylo said.

I walked down to the bank. Grass and tulies and cattails should’ve grown here. Willows. Blackberries. I knelt and peered into water that should’ve combed the green hair of water weeds. I saw only clear water flowing over stones.

“Woe,” I echoed. “Yes.”

Sitting back on my haunches, I closed my eyes on the dead river. Then I thought, _For the gods’ sake, Rey, you’re a sorceress. This man is under a spell. Rather than feeling all sorry for yourself, why don’t you try to remove it?_

Okay, my magic made things grow. What did I want to grow? How about free will? Rational sense. Hmmm. Some empathy, maybe. Now the question was, would my power work on any of those?

I gave it a pat on the head and slipped its leash to let it get its muddy pawprints all over Hux’s spell.

“Rey,” Kylo said. “What are you doing?”

Oops. “Oh, um, I…” Sighing, I stood and turned to face him. “To be perfectly honest, I’m trying to disenchant you.”

One strong, black brow rose. “In the literal sense, I see.”

I shifted from one foot to the other. “Well…yes.”

With the slightest quirk to the corner of his lips, he nodded thoughtfully. “But as I easily noticed your attempt, doesn’t it make sense that I’d notice the casting of the original spell?”

“Okay, you’re right, I can’t explain that part,” I said, throwing up my hands. “But…well…what about what you’ve done, bringing me here? Wouldn’t it have made a lot more sense to, say, go on a couple of dates first? Let me introduce you to my mom? You know, kind of start out slow and see where things go.”

The little amused quirk on his lips disappeared. “That isn’t possible.”

“But…why not?”

He didn’t answer.

My insides twisted like a wrung dishrag. “At least let me tell my mom I’m okay.”

He turned away. “Rey—”

“Why not?” I insisted. “What can she do to you? You’re the most powerful sorcerer I’ve ever seen.”

He was gazing away across the landscape, but he turned to look at me then. I suddenly wished he hadn’t.

“Yes,” he gritted out. “I am the most powerful sorcerer you will ever see.”

He turned on his heel and stalked off. I didn’t dare follow until he’d gotten some distance ahead.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has had enough of the whole kidnapping situation. Beginning her escape attempts, she meets the dreadful guardian of the gates of the Underworld, Chewbacca.

I have to admit, after our little spat, I really expected Kylo to wait for me at some point. He didn’t. I went from feeling mystified and alarmed to mad.

_I’m the most powerful sorcerer you’ll ever see._ So what was that supposed to mean? That he was so powerful he could do whatever he damn well pleased? How dare he get angry with me! _I_ was the one held against my will in this horrible, barren place.

Not wanting to get lost in this nowhereland, I kept him in sight until the anteroom with the white globes. I waited until he disappeared through the door at the far end, then waited a while longer, giving him time to get across the black hall.

By the time I got back to my room and I’d gone over our interchange for about the twenty-fifth time, I was beginning to think that he hadn’t seemed angry and arrogant so much as in agony. The look on his face, full of loathing, the pain in his voice… What was with that?

I paced back and forth in front of the French doors, stewing. I didn’t care what Kylo’s problem was. What I cared about was getting out of here.

So how did I know that only really powerful sorcerers could open the ways between dimensions? Hell, who was to say _I_ wasn’t a really powerful sorcerer, and only needed the motivation to prove it? My magic certainly had enough horsepower to jerk me around like a semi tractor pulling a Volkswagen.

I picked up the little Night’s Crown and carried it into the illusory meadow. Sure, nothing out there was real, but the simulation of sunlight and breeze and life, as long as I pretended it wasn’t a simulation, gave me courage. The real plant gave my magic something to work off of.

Half an hour later—or an hour, or four, or whatever—the only thing I’d managed to accomplish was to give myself a headache. Or I suppose the headache might just possibly have had something to do with the fact that I hadn’t eaten in…who knew how long. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious after Kylo brought me here.

I pushed myself up, picked up the plant and plodded back inside.

Bea hovered by the fireplace, the cheery flames flickering palely through her skirt. She gestured at a small table. A couple of covered dishes and a steaming cup sat on it, as well as a cut crystal vase with an arrangement of dried rosebuds and baby’s breath. A little square of paper nestled among the flowers.

I folded my arms. “Uh-uh. Forget it. You can tell Kylo I’m on a hunger strike and I am _not_ eating a single bite until I go home.”

She lifted the cover off one of the dishes. Scrambled eggs and sausage. Under the other cover were a toasted English muffin and a little crock of marmalade. A split-open pomegranate sat on a small plate. My stomach rumbled like a cement mixer.

“Well…okay,” I said. “Maybe just this once.”

I sat down at the little table, grabbed the pomegranate and spooned seeds into my mouth. I _love_ pomegranates. After I polished off half, I went to work on the eggs and sausages.

Bea sat in the chair opposite. I got the feeling she was watching me, even though, as usual, her face was turned away.

“Um, muffin?” I offered.

She shook her head.

“Tea?”

She shook her head again.

I looked at the items on the table and sighed. “The note, right?”

She nodded.

“Okay, I’ll read it.” I extracted the paper, showering fragile dried baby’s breath, and unfolded it.

_Rey_ , read the graceful, elegant letters. _Please forgive my behavior. It's due to troubles that have nothing to do with you. My feelings concerning you are fully the opposite of what I displayed, I assure you. I promise it will never happen again_.

“Right.” I answered aloud. “But I don’t hear you telling me what a terrible mistake you’ve made and how you’ll send me home right after breakfast.”

_Hello_ , Rey. Did I really intend to wait around for Kylo to see the error of his ways? Okay, fine. Hux’s spell was more than my magic or knowledge could deal with. Same with opening a way back to the real world. But there was one door in the black hall I hadn’t been through yet, the one all the magic pushed away from. If I wasn’t going to check it out before I gave up, I deserved my captivity.

Bea came with me when I got up and headed for the black hall. When I reached the door with the armored, sword-bearing figure, though, she peeled off like she’d suddenly remembered an important appointment elsewhere.

This was not encouraging. Nevertheless, I wet my lips, shook back my hair and pushed open the door.

It would’ve been nice to find a big, green “EXIT” sign with an arrow. Yeah, I know. Dream on.

Instead, I stepped into what looked like the entry foyer to an M.C. Escher drawing, complete with a confusing array of doors, staircases and galleries. In the middle of the black-and-white tiled floor sat what looked like a huge heap of fur someone had carelessly dropped. Except this heap of fur had arms bigger around than my own leg wrapped around its knees.

Needless to say, I came to an abrupt stop. The fur heap raised its head. This was a definite loophole to Kylo’s promise of “you may go anywhere you wish.”

The “this” in question was… I wasn’t sure what it was. Something that looked like a cross between a lion, an orangutan, and a man. An extremely _large_ cross.  The head was probably twice the size of my own, and it looked at me out of keen blue eyes. It slowly unfolded itself and stood. My head tilted back at an alarming angle to keep its face in view.

Now if I’d been tempted to think I’d stumbled on another living creature, the towering mass of long hair and powerful muscle would’ve set me straight. I stumbled backward.

It raised its arms over its head, stretched and roared, showing a set of very white, very pointed teeth.

“Well,” it rumbled. “It’s the little sorceress. Hello.”

I stopped again and stood there quivering. “H-hi,” I squeaked.

It blinked. “Ah. I’m being discourteous. I am Chewbacca.”

With the quality of diction, it was very disconcerting.

“Oh,” I said, and stared at it—him—until I remembered you’re not supposed to stare predators in the eyes. It’s interpreted as aggression. I looked down at those furry hands the size of dinner plates. “I—um—I’m Rey.”

“Honored to meet you, Rey.” He sat down and linked arms around knees again, maybe so he wouldn’t tower so alarmingly. “The young master told me to expect you.”

“He did?”

“Oh, yes. I was delighted when he said he’d brought—” He broke off, his gaze darting away. “Ah, erm, yes. As I was saying, I was delighted when he told me about you.”

I wondered what he had been about to say. “You were? Why?”

“The young master is so very lonely, you see,” he said. “There are times I’ve feared greatly for his wellbeing. I speak with him and bear him company from time to time, but he needs his own kind.”

This sounded like one of those situations in which people set themselves up for their own misery.

“Then why does he hang around here? This plane isn’t exactly a social hot spot.”

“I’ve often asked myself the same thing. I can only tell you that the young master rarely leaves this place.”

It was weird to be standing in the foyer of this Winchester Mystery House on steroids, talking to a…a sasquatch who sounded like he’d attended an Ivy League college, but at least I was finally getting some answers.

I folded my arms. “So who made me the official keeper of company? I’m sure there are millions of other people more interesting and much better suited than I am.”

He shook his shaggy head emphatically. “Not at all. You’re perfectly suited.”

“ _Excuse_ me,” I said, “but I’m an earth sorceress. I’ve haven’t even been here a day and I’m already getting ragged around the edges.”

“Precisely the point.” He raised a finger. “You’ve been here a day, and you, of all creation, are only a bit strained.”

One of us was definitely not getting it here.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Someone can point me to the way out. I’ll go to the nursery where I work, use my employee discount to get one of everything and bring it all here. Do you think your master might see his way clear to letting me go then?”

Of course, it would’ve made a lot more sense to put this proposition to Kylo, but after our last encounter, I was a little wary about piping up with any more good ideas.

“I fear you misunderstand, Rey.”

I threw up my hands. “What is there to misunderstand? I’ve been dragged to this terrible place where the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow, nothing grows, nothing breathes, nothing _lives_ —” My voice was getting higher and higher. I stopped and swallowed hard.

“It isn’t simply a matter that nothing lives here,” Chewbacca said gently. “It’s that nothing _can_. Nothing but you.”

I stared at him. Leia had said, _I offered him a flower, living beauty, something he could cherish_. And Kylo had said, amazed, _You took my hand_. A suspicion began to take shape in my mind, something that made me go cold all over. Or maybe it was more than a suspicion, but I couldn’t bear to face it. It, and its implications.

I said, “I don’t understand.”

He sighed. “Neither do I.” He pronounced it _nye-ther_. “I am merely a conjuration, and so cannot sense the pulse of life as you and the young master can. I know only that the first gleam of hope I’ve seen in him came with you. For that I am grateful, and shall endeavor to serve you as faithfully as I serve him.” And this fearful apparition bowed his head and placed a hand over his heart.

This glimpse of a despairing Kylo caught me. He’d seemed so…so powerful, so self-contained—

Chewbacca said, “The young master said to allow you to go where you will. “That,” he nodded to my right, to a series of red doors and a staircase carpeted in black and white, “is where the specters stay. They’re unable to harm you, but they can still frighten.”

“Bea—the gho—um, girl who keeps me company—doesn’t have to stay there, does she?”

No wonder she’d made tracks in the other direction if she’d once been stuck in the middle of frightening shades.

He glanced back over his shoulder. “The young master brought her from there after you came.”

I peered past his right shoulder at a solitary door that looked like it must lead to a dungeon, all blackened wood and iron bindings. “Where does that one go?”

“I know only that the young master spends much time within.”

Ooh. Now that was interesting. “Is Kylo in there now?”

“No, not now.”

“I guess that’s where I’m going, then. Thanks for your help.”

“I’m always at your service,” he said, stepping aside.

The inner door, too, opened easily under my hand, though it sighed as the one that opened onto the black hall hadn’t.

_Please, please_ , I thought, _let this be the way out_ …

I stepped into a room, a very ordinary, middle-class room with wall-to-wall carpet, a couch and chairs, a coffee table with books and magazines scattered across it, and an old tube TV in the corner. A picture window looked out onto a quiet residential street, sidewalks, a lawn drifted with fall leaves. Through another door to my left came voices.

“ _Yesss!”_ I whispered. All I’d had to do was stick with it, find the right door, and _bam!_ I was back in the real world. _Where_ in the real world was another question, but I’d worry about that later.

I bit my lip. _Well, here goes_. If they called the cops, at least I’d get a free phone call.

I knocked firmly on the front door as if I’d found it open. “Hello-o-o!” I called. “Anybody home?”

The happy babble continued in the other room.

“Excuse me,” I went on. “I don’t mean to barge in, but I wonder if I could use your phone.”

I made my way toward the voices, the banter of children, a woman’s rich laugh, a man’s rusty, good-humored tones.

A man, a woman, and four kids wearing silly pointed birthday hats sat around a table littered with plates and half a birthday cake with a big “12” on it. None of them even glanced at the intruder—me, that is—standing in the doorway of their dining room. Weird.

Two of the younger kids dueled with those paper party favors that toot and uncurl when you blow in them. A young girl sitting in the middle of a pile of birthday present debris held a new sweater to her chest and mugged for an older boy with a camera pressed to his face. The woman sat leaning into her husband, smiling. She was beautiful, with straight brows, slightly hooded eyes and full, red lips with a little pout to them.

The flash popped, dazzling my eyes. When I’d finally blinked the spots away, the boy had put down his camera and was shooting his party trumpet at his sister’s nose.

Wavy black hair. Dark eyes. For a second I thought he must be Kylo’ kid brother. Then I caught my breath.

“ _Kylo?”_ I said. Don’t ask me how I knew—I just did. This was a young Kylo, a Kylo who couldn’t yet grow a beard and mustache. He was laughing, ducking the uncurling ribbon of paper his sister blew at him. Which meant…

I sagged against the door frame. This wasn’t the real world. It was the past.

No one paid the least attention to me. I might’ve been the ghost, drifting unseen and unheard around the edges of this happy family gathering. I circled the table, watching. The father had Kylo’ good looks (or Kylo had his, I suppose), but was craggier, more angular, with a crooked grin that shouted “scoundrel.” The woman didn’t look like Kylo. Not even a little bit. Was she a stepmother, maybe?

The younger boy knocked over a glass of milk in the heat of the birthday-trumpet battle. The father gestured, and the spill spreading across the table stopped and ran _back_ toward the glass. The white wave piled in and the glass tipped itself upright.

Wow. I’d never seen sorcery like that before.

Young Kylo watched just as eagerly. “When will I be able to do that, Dad?”

His father laughed. “When it’s time. Just be patient.”

“But you could _make_ it time,” Kylo persisted.

_He could?_ I thought.

“I could,” the father said, “but I won’t. You have to wait like everyone else.”

The woman raised a teasing brow. “Don’t you want to be able to do what I do?”

Kylo’s cheekbones pinked. “That’s girl stuff!”

“Tell that to all the doctors who deliver babies,” she said with a wry smile.

The father ran a finger through her rich brown hair and murmured, “Not all of it is girl stuff.”

His mouth was close to her ear, and his breath must be tickling it. She turned and kissed him, a good, hard buss not inappropriate in front of the kids, but also one that promised a lot more later.

I turned and scurried out through another door. The sight of that face so much like Kylo’s kept running through my head, the teasing laughter in his voice, the caress of his fingers through his wife’s hair.

Heat went through me, and it wasn’t entirely a blush. _Oh, come_ on, _Rey_ , I told myself. _It’s not like this is the first time you’ve seen people kiss!_ So why was I all hot and bothered now? Why was I running away like…like I was being chased by a giant sasquatch?


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more Rey learns about Kylo, the more she wants to be with him. There's just one, tiny little problem with that-- her kidnapping.

I had three strikes against me. Unfortunately, I was _not_ out. That left figuring out what kept Kylo here if he was “so very lonely,” and why I got so lucky as to be the chosen companion of his exile.

I know. It all sounds so Beauty-and-the-Beast-ish, but at least a mystery gave me something to think about besides the fact that I was pinned like a butterfly. Maybe I couldn’t magic my way out, but I could still try to puzzle my way free. And if I stumbled across something within these memories that might give me some leverage over Kylo, so much the better.

Because obviously, that’s what these were: Kylo’ memories. Some were bright and clear as if etched in crystal. Others were fuzzy and silent, like those old eight-millimeter home movies where black-and-white people in funny clothes and hairdos wave and mouth at the camera.

I explored his bedroom, filled with model airplanes and posters of aircraft from barnstormers to the Blue Angels. I leaned my elbows on his windowsill and watched him play with RC airplanes in the backyard.

I discovered he had a love for creatures: an oscar fish swam in a small aquarium on a shelf, a fuzzy caterpillar munched leaves in a jar with holes punched in the lid, gerbils ran in an exercise wheel their cage, a lizard pounced on crickets in a terrarium decorated with smooth stones, a branch and a small dish of water. The finches that chattered in the family room were supposedly his sister’s, but Kylo was the one who fed them and changed the papers on the bottom of the cage. And the family dog, a big, ugly mutt that looked like a cross between a Rottweiler and a bull mastiff, followed him everywhere, except when he played with the RC airplanes.

So where was the disconnect between the kid on the high school debate team, the one whose good looks made him so popular with the girls while not alienating the guys, and the grim, intense sorcerer I knew? Something to do with his magic?

The strange thing was, I saw no sign of it. A sorcerer’s powers usually manifest a year or two after puberty. Like I said, mine came on really late. I saw Kylo with a humongous crush on a girl named Menthie in junior high. I watched him try to wheedle his dad into letting him take his old classic Camaro to a friend’s party. (Why, I couldn’t guess. A more pathetic piece of junk I’d never seen before, and that was counting my old Toyota. But Han, Kylo’s dad, loved to say that it could do the Kessel Run—whatever that was—in twelve seconds flat, so maybe that was part of the draw.) I watched him agonize over his SATs and pore over colleges on the web. But no magic.

I was searching for a way to escape, so it makes sense that I began to get pretty single-minded in my search. Okay, I’ll admit it: maybe even a little obsessed. I mean, under the circumstances, it’s not unreasonable. Right?

I spent my days with memories of Kylo as a little kid, as a boy, a teenager with his quick grin and wicked sense of humor. Kind of like reading a story you just can’t put down. Even when you aren’t actually reading it, it possesses you, fills your imagination, makes you wish you could leave the everyday world and live in the story’s world.

This went on for…I don’t know how long. I lost track after a while.

Anyway, one day I happened upon a Yule scene. The family was gathered in the living room in their robes and slippers opening presents. Which made the stranger standing with his back to me all the more conspicuous, because he was wearing a long black coat. He wasn’t opening any presents, either, just watching. I came closer, curious, and he turned.

“Kylo,” I blurted. This was the present Kylo, the one I knew, the sorcerer with the goatee, not the kid hanging over the radio-controlled P-40E Flying Tiger he’d just unwrapped. “I—I’m sorry,” I blurted.

Gods. I was mortally embarrassed. _Now_ I felt like a peeping Tom. I turned to leave—to run, more like.

“Wait,” he said. “You don’t need to go.”

“But—I—oh…” I stood there with not a clue what to say.

He took a step toward me. Behind him, the family continued unwrapping presents. “Chewbacca didn’t explain you’re welcome here?”

“Yes—yes, he did.” I fumbled for something else to say. “Um. Thanks.”

In the memory, the younger sister squealed, “An Easy-Bake Oven!”

Kylo turned to the scene and smiled. “That was one of my favorite Yuletides. I’d been sick with the flu for a week, no matter what Qi’ra did. After I unwrapped that plane, I mended with a vengeance.”

Qi’ra was his stepmother. That was something else I’d discovered, along with his dad’s name.

Looking at Kylo, I realized with a start it was the first time I’d seen him smile like that, with tenderness. His present-day-self, that is. I turned quickly, flustered, though I couldn’t have said why. Qi’ra, lifting a frothy bit of lace and not much else from silver tissue paper, exclaimed in delight.

“I like your parents,” I said, somewhat at random. I felt so awkward. “They seem really nice.”

He nodded, but the smile withered. “They were.”

_Were?_ “Your brother and sisters,” I went on desperately. “Are they sorcerers, too?”

“No,” he said. Politely, yet quite decisively.

I was _not_ doing well here. “Kylo…” I ventured.

The dark look on his face lightened a little.

I took this as encouragement. “I don’t mean to make you mad. Honestly, I’m not trying to.”

He suddenly took my hands. “No, Rey. I’m not angry with you.”

I stared at my hands clasped against his dark shirt and thought of the times I’d seen his father hold his stepmother’s hands like that, bending his head to kiss her fingers…

I must’ve stirred because he relaxed his grasp, letting me slide free.

“I enjoy visiting here,” he said. “I find it calming.”

So what made him _un-_ calm? “I like it, too,” I said instead. I debated a second, decided it was safe and said, “Your family—” I stumbled, almost saying _is_. “–was a lot different from mine. My real parents disappeared when I was little.” I glanced at him, and he nodded as if he already knew. “All I remember is Mom—Maz, my adopted mom—and me,” I went on. “And we hardly ever lived in a town.”

“Weren’t you lonely?”

I shrugged. “Rural communities are very close. Everybody knows everybody. Plus Mom is always busy, and I’d go everywhere with her…” I sighed and fell silent.

“You miss her,” Kylo said.

I nodded, ashamed.  His family was dead—at least I assumed they were, the way he talked. These shades were all he’d ever see of them again.

“I understand,” he said. “It is lonely here.” Gazing at me in that intense way of his, he said very softly, “You’re not alone.”

Realizing how alone he was, how desolate and resigned, something in me wanted to promise him the same. I mean, technically, it was true—he wasn’t alone, not with me here.

But the fact was, I did not want to be here. I wanted to be home, with Mom. I wanted to hang out with Finn and go to work every day at the nursery. I even wanted to still be trying to figure out what to do with my crazy, unmanageable powers.

The silence stretched, and I realized we were staring into each other’s eyes. Somehow, my hand was in his, his magic swirling around me as if to gather me up and draw me in.

A servo whirred, tilting ailerons as Kylo-the-boy worked the RC controller. “Wow! Cool! It’s gonna fly just like a real plane!”

Quickly letting go of my hand, Kylo turned back to watch his younger self. “At that age,” he said with the air of someone changing the subject, “I wanted to be a pilot or an astronaut, then when I was older, a veterinarian. Qi’ra liked the idea of my becoming a healer—” His lips closed in a line of pain.

Without thinking about it, I reached out and took his hand again.

He seemed to drag himself back from some dark place. “I know you’re uncomfortable with illusions, but you seem to enjoy these memories. Have you ever flown?”

Now with a sorcerer, that can be a very literal question, but whether by magic or in the usual way, the answer was “no.” I shook my head.

His fingers curled around mine in a strong, warm grasp. “Come with me.”

We stepped through a door into a summertime woods. The glimmer of a lake was visible between the trunks, and a smell of wood smoke drifted on the air. A child’s voice echoed under the trees. We ducked under low branches and came out onto the bright, windy field of another memory.

Puffy clouds dotted a sky the blue of the stone in the ring Kylo had given me. Brown, prickly weeds bordered strips of asphalt, and rows of hangars and a squat tower crouched to one side. Not far away a couple of guys were dragging a cable attached to a small plane toward another plane, low and silver with long, thin wings like an albatross’. They hooked it under the nose of the smaller plane, then the plane in front rolled forward a little, taking up the slack.

“Come on!” Kylo said and ran for the towed plane.

“But—!”

For a second I glimpsed an image of a young Kylo and his father in the seats. They flickered away, then the present-day Kylo clambered into the cockpit, hauling me into the forward seat. The canopy shut.

“But,” I said again, “how can we be in the memory?”

“Can’t you take part in your own memories?”

He had a point. Where I came in was another question.

The plane in front blatted suddenly, its propellers blurring first clockwise, then counterclockwise, then we were heading down runway, faster, faster. A weird stomach-dipping lurch came and all the bumps and vibrations of the pavement ceased. I peered out the canopy.

I’m happy to say I didn’t panic when the ground dropped away, tilting at an angle that sent my inner ear scrambling. The runway and taxiways turned into straight-ruled lines. A freeway appeared, cars and trucks beetling along it, winking in the sun, then a town, then a landscape like a topo map dotted with brown and green. There was a _bang_ , a jerk, and world and sky wheeled with a quiet rush of air.

I didn’t quite scream, but maybe I squeaked a little. Behind me, Kylo whooped with joy.  A sudden urge to see grabbed me, and I sneaked a look back over my shoulder.

I saw instead a hard glitter of white teeth, as if he defied something even more powerful than himself. Something that would crush him if it could.

I snatched my gaze forward again, to the circle of earth and sky beyond the scratched Plexiglas of the canopy.

That was ridiculous, I thought. What could be stronger than he was? He’d said himself he was the most powerful sorcerer I’d ever see.

_Yeah_ , part of my mind whispered. Then why did Chewbacca say he feared for “the young master’s” wellbeing? Why did Kylo stay here _all alone?_

“I love this freedom,” he said. “The sun, the wind, the world all spread out below.”

Freedom. Sun, wind. He craved it too? Then why—?

“Are you enjoying it, Rey?”

“I—yes. Very much.” Even though it was only one step removed from illusion, I felt…different. Almost like I shared an adventure with…a friend.

Like a _what_ with _what?_

“It won’t last long,” he said. “It was only a half-hour flight.”

The glider sailed down, down again, leaving the open sky with its popcorn-puffy clouds for reality.

My mood went down with it. The Kylo who helped me out of the glider once on the ground was the reserved, serious one I knew. But a remembered glint of sunlight gleamed in his dark eyes.

“It was good…” he said and paused. “…to share that with someone.”

I nodded, staring at the weeds verging the runway. The wind rattled them, and they prickled through my socks.

Why did I feel so glum? I’d learned something today, hadn’t I?  If only I could get myself to puzzle over how I could use it.

He walked beside me in silence for a while, then said, “Will you join me again?”

Just like that, the glumness evaporated. “I’d—” _I’d like that_ , I almost said. Instead, I blurted out, “I’d better not.”

Shutters slammed closed over the tentative light in his face. “Of course,” he said. “I understand.”

With a slight, polite nod, he turned and strode away, disappearing into the maw of a hangar.

Gee, couldn’t I have said anything lamer, like _I have to wash my hair_? I cursed myself all the way back to my rooms.

_Idiot!_ I told myself. _Why’re you so upset? What’re you ashamed of?_

Standing in the middle of my bedroom, I ragged on myself in this fashion, not paying attention to the gentle twilight outside the French doors, or Bea hovering uncertainly in the doorway to the bathroom, or a familiar, sweetish, musky smell.

She drifted toward me, then back to the bathroom door. I ignored her. I had a few more choice words for myself. She came back and planted herself (if a ghost can plant itself) in front of me.

“ _What_ , Bea?”

She beckoned. If she’d been alive, I would’ve said she was excited. She looked toward the bathroom.

“You want me to go in there?”

I felt like I was in a Lassie movie: _What, girl? Timmy is trapped in an old well?_

She nodded and beckoned again.

I sighed. “Okay. I need the distraction anyway.”

The smell was stronger in the bathroom, but it still didn’t register as anything unusual. I looked around. Same Roman tub, same brass tap, same tile and sink and toilet.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t see what you’re all worked up about.”

She took my hand—actually took my hand—with a cold, tingly and not entirely solid grip. She towed me to the tub and pointed down at the drain.

I dutifully looked. “Yep, I see the drain. What’s so special—”

With a tenuous finger, she tapped my nose.

Finally, the smell registered. Mildew. Or mold. At first I still didn’t put two and two together then suddenly, the lightbulb came on.

I fell to my knees beside the tub. Reaching down, I stuck a finger in the brushed brass drain and felt around inside it. It was slimy. I pulled out my finger and squinted at the grayish-blackish goop on it.

If I’d had any doubt before, my magic leapt up like a starved dog. I turned on the tap and hurriedly washed off the stuff before it could grow into a hideous pulsating mass of hyphae.

Kneeling on the floor, I looked up at Bea. “How? I didn’t create this. It’s just plain, old, ordinary drain gunk.”

She held her hands palm up.

Okay, I told myself, don’t get excited. It’s only mold. It hardly even counts as life. For all I know, it’s been around all the time and only took a regularly-used drain to make it noticeable.

Yeah, I argued, but Chewbacca had said nothing _can_ live here.

But what did he know? He was just a figment of Kylo’s imagination. Besides, a moldy drain didn’t do a thing for my problem, and it wasn’t about to make my stay any more pleasant.

And I didn’t want to keep thinking about what might.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Rey realizes she's starting to fall for Kylo, she knows she'd better get serious about escaping.

It’s a very, very bad sign when the captive starts looking forward to the captor’s company.

I’d been in bed a while. Every time I started to drift off, that happy thought would stick me with a pin then skitter away. Finally I caught it. I sat up straight, suddenly wide awake, that realization slamming through me like adrenaline.

It was still “night” outside, utterly dark, silent, lifeless as no night ever is in the real world. I scrambled up, my pulse jumping everywhere in my body from toes to eyeballs, like my blood pressure had instantly soared by twenty points.

 _Hello!_ Earth to Rey—Kylo was the only one here to be _with_. But that was exactly the point. How far could I expect this to go?

I didn’t want to stick around to find out.

Never mind that my success in finding an escape route had so far been nil. I dragged clothes out of the closet, hurried them on and spilled out of the room. I was out in the black hall without remembering the doors and hallways in between. In the silence, my blood sucked and rushed in my ears like the pound of waves on a beach. And then I heard… _whistling_.

At this point, I was so wigged out I jumped and flattened myself against the nearest wall.

The door to Kylo’s throne room opened, and a man walked out.

At the moment, I wasn’t particularly anxious for another tête-à-tête with Kylo. This, however, was not Kylo—I could tell that even from all the way across the hall. This was someone else, someone else with dark, wavy hair but who didn’t cut the figure Kylo did. This someone was bopping along like he’d just won the lottery. Whistling.

Who in the _hell_ could be in a good enough mood here to do that?

Who else could be here at all?

He disappeared through the bearded-man door. I stood leaning against my wall for a few more minutes, trying to decide if I’d seen what I thought I had. Of course, there was only one way to find out. I hurried after him.

The white globes cast their moonlike light across the anteroom, enough that I could clearly make out the figure walking away from me. He got to the last of the lights and three more figures faded out of the dimness to meet him.

He stopped and said, “All right, girls. I got the master talked around. He knows he’s got to take care of business. Can’t have the whole damn place fall apart around our ears.”

Sure enough, the three new ones were women. There was a towering Valkyrie of a woman with short, curly blonde hair, a tall but not-as-tall woman with lavender hair, and a short Asian girl. The Asian girl was the only one shorter than the guy, but what he lacked in height he more than made up for in cockiness.

The Valkyrie said, “No fun tonight, I guess.”

“Don’t start,” said the lavender-haired one. “Anger the master, and there we’ll be, behind Chewbacca’s door.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” the Asian girl said. “He’s always fair, and _we_ didn’t upset him—”

“Got the little princess here,” the Valkyrie interrupted. “Did you know that?”

I wondered who “the little princess” was until all four turned and looked in my direction.

Oh.

“Well, come on then,” the man said. “Let’s have a look at you.”

“Yeah,” the Asian girl said. “See what all the fuss is about.”

Gosh, nothing like a friendly invitation. But the alternative was to tuck tail and run, so I shot my cuffs and strode forward. After all, I _am_ a sorceress, and have my dignity to uphold.

They watched me approach with everything from sullen hostility to curiosity and amusement, and I had a chance to check them out.

Despite of their outlandish looks, they were each beautiful in their own way. And outlandish they definitely were. The Valkyrie wore shining silver biker leathers like armor. The lavender-haired woman wore a drapey, dove-grey dress, cuff-like bracelets and a silver tiara like a halo. The Asian girl was dressed in coveralls, reminding me of the ones I wore to work. I instantly felt a warm, friendly glow toward her.

The man, on the other hand, was probably one of the best-looking guys I’ve ever seen, and that was saying something—black hair, dark eyes, attractive five-o-clock shadow on his olive-skinned face. The leather pilot’s jacket only added to his charisma.

All four looked me up and down, then the man whistled again and said, “Not bad.”

“Yeah, well, babes are a dime a dozen,” the Valkyrie said. “If that’s what the master wants, we could bring some that’d be less trouble.”

“I’m Rey.” I said firmly. “And you are?”

“See, girls?” the man said. “We’re being rude and here she is, the master’s special guest.” He gestured to the tall woman with the lavender hair. “This beautiful young lady is Amilyn.”

Amilyn arched a brow at the word “young.”

“I’m Phasma,” the Valkyrie broke in and hooked a thumb at the Asian girl. “That’s Rose.”

Rose nodded and gave about the cutest smile I’ve ever seen on a girl.

The man put a hand on his chest. “I’m Poe Dameron. You can call me Poe.”

“She can call me gone,” Phasma said. “I got other things to do.” She stalked off.

“We’d better go after her,” Amilyn said. “You know how she gets.”

They turned to follow her. Taking my arm, Rose pulled me along. “Don’t mind Phasma. She’s just upset because she didn’t get her entertainment. We usually break loose after work.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

Five pairs of feet should’ve made a lot of noise walking across that stony ground. Mine were the only ones that did.

“We’re in charge of operations here,” Poe said. “The girls’re in acquisitions, and me, I’m in shipping.” He chuckled as if at a joke. Amilyn rolled her eyes and Rose shook her head, dimpling.

“We bring in the goods,” Rose explained. “It’s a satisfying job, but it can be hard work.”

Was that where the eggs and English muffins and dried flowers and so forth came from? I’d assumed Kylo conjured them.

“That’s why Phasma takes her fun so seriously.” Amilyn pushed back a lock of her lavender hair. “And she feels you’re the reason she didn’t get it.”

I felt like I’d been dropped into a punk version of _Alice in Wonderland_. “Me! How’s that?”

Poe gave my shoulder a rough pat. “Well, you see, the master just hasn’t been himself lately. Of course, he won’t say why, but we’ve all noticed it’s been since a certain young lady arrived. He’s distracted. Tonight, he just sat on his throne with his chin in his hand and said, ‘This isn’t the time, Poe. I have other concerns.’”

Rose shot him a startled glance. “You told him how we found that one, didn’t you? We don’t bring them here on a whim.”

“Of course I did,” Poe said. “But he just said, ‘Who am I to dispense justice?’” Poe shook his head and sighed. “You should take mercy on him, miss,” he said to me. “He’s in a state, let me tell you.”

Justice? What did that have to do with anything? But I latched onto the comment that Kylo was “in a state.” This was curiously comforting and uncomfortable at the same time.

“Excuse me,” I said. “ _I’m_ the one kidnapped here. I’m sorry if Kylo is upset because of me, but frankly, the feeling is mutual.”

The other three exchanged glances. “That’s not like him,” Rose said.

“What isn’t?” I said.

Rose frowned. “Kidnapping innocents.” She shook her head, her black hair bobbing. “He’s just not that type.”

“That’s a relief, I guess,” I said. “But here I am.”

Poe stuck his hand in his pocket, pulled out a coin and flipped it: _ping_. It winked golden in the dim air, the size of a silver dollar. “See, otherwise, I’d expect you to be carrying my coin. Then I’d bring you on across.”

Rose grinned, showing teeth that would’ve looked at home in a jaguar’s mouth. “And we escort only the most deserving.”

I looked back and forth between them. “Escort? Are you talking about people?”

“Fuel,” Amilyn said firmly. “To keep the engines running around here.”

Rose nodded, her face hard.

I had the feeling their gas stops definitely took place at morgues, not slaughterhouses. I probably should’ve been queasy picturing the dead, um… meat arriving along with the grocery bags, but I was getting more and more excited. If this bunch was bringing in people—okay, bodies—that meant there was a way out.

I looked expectantly around at the bleak, barren nowhere-ness of rock and lowering sky. The glassy dark flow of the River of Woe drew a sharp line through all the tumbled grey.

Ahead, Phasma had stopped by what I thought was a big rock. She bent and shoved the rock into the water—where it floated.

Oh. A boat.

 _A boat._ The ringing excitement inside me turned into a jangling I was surprised wasn’t audible.

“Come on, hurry, up,” Phasma called. “I’m bored, and there's obviously nothing happening here.”

“Are you going to the real world?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Where else?” Rose said and smiled. “See ya, Rey.”

Phasma hopped into the boat, not rocking it a bit. “Yak, yak. Let’s go.”

Amilyn and Rose climbed in, too, three women in one small boat. It floated high as it had when empty. Poe turned to climb in, too.

I followed right behind. “Take me.”

They all looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was for wanting to go with such an alarming bunch.

“Please,” I said. “I can’t stay here. It’s not doing Kylo or me any good, can’t you see that?”

Phasma snorted. “It’s more than our skins’re worth to take you anywhere, princess.”

Behind her, Amilyn made a face and mimed smacking her in the head.

Patting Phasma’s arm, Rose said to me, “Give it a chance, Rey. Maybe you’ll find you do have something good.”

I scrambled to the edge of the water. “Wait—please. At least take a message. Tell my mother I’m all right!”

Shaking his head, Poe got in, picked up a long pole from the bottom of the boat and shoved off the bank. “Talk to the master about that. Now don’t go doing anything stupid, miss, like trying to swim after us. If you don’t drown, you’ll only end up with a bad cold.”

The river purled past, swift and almost silent. “But—”

Shaking the pole at me, Poe said, “No ‘buts.’ Now stay there. I’ll be right back.”

I waited until the boat was a dim blur on the water before I waded out. The water bit at my feet, my ankles like misery, bitter and chill. Despair enveloped me, utter, drowning hopelessness: I’d be here forever in this dim, dead, dreary world, never to see Mom’s face again. I should just give up…

I scrambled back up the bank and the feeling faded. This was obviously called the River of Woe for a good reason.

I looked down into the water. Little dark threads furred some of the stones closest to the bank. Squatting down, I peered at them, wanting to pick one out of the water to see what it was. No way was I going to plunge my hand and arm into that water again, though.

I was looking around for a stick (silly me) to fish out one of those rocks when Poe’s whistling echoed across the water again.

“Your feet’re wet,” he said when he dragged the boat out of the water. “At least you have enough sense not to go farther.”

“You could take me across,” I shot back. “You know I’ll try if you don’t.”

He grinned. “Probably, but I might as well tell you, this boat’ll sink right under you unless I’m in it.” He gave me an appraising glance. “Besides, you don’t want to be over there all by yourself.” He turned and started back the way we’d come.

I hurried after him. “Why? What’s there?”

“Nothing you want run into. Hell, the _master_ wants nothing to do with what’s there.” He shrugged. “But what choice does he have? He is what he is. Nothing can change that.”

He was walking fast enough to keep a little ahead. Trying to change the subject, I decided. Well, sorry. It wasn’t going to happen.

“So what about Rose and Amilyn and Phasma? What about you? Seems to me if whatever’s on the other side of the river is so awful, you’d go another way.”

“Still trying to find that loophole, huh?” He fell into step with me. “You’re not gonna find one there, because we aren’t the kind that can be bothered by that. Me, I’m the boatman. The girls are ghosts. You ever hear that saying, ‘Hell’s got no fury like a spurned woman?’ Spurned women is what they were before they became ghosts. Extremely _angry_ ghosts. You'd call them Furies. Then the master came along and told ‘em if they were going to torment people, they should at least torment the ones who deserve it. And me…” He flipped the coin again, _ping_. “My boat doesn’t float unless I get my coin.”

Eyeing him, I frowned. He was telling me stuff while managing to tell me not much of anything. “And then what?”

He slid me a sidelong look. “If you don’t know already, it’s for the master to tell you.”

I slid him a look of my own. “Maybe I should ask when he dispenses justice?”

Turning to face me, he folded his arms. “If I were you, I’d forget about all that.” He made a disgusted noise. “When did pretty girls get so smart, anyway?”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To her extreme dismay, Rey begins to succumb to Kylo's charms.

I’m sure I don’t need to say I tried Poe’s boat despite his warnings. I got a good dunking in the River of Woe for my trouble. Promptly plunging into despair as well as cold, deep water, I decided I might as well just sink to the bottom and end it all.

Except someone had snitched, because the river had been ensorcelled to spit me back up on the shore, where I lay sputtering and shivering and cursing. The boat popped back to the surface then bobbed there, the river’s current chuckling against its boards.

Dripping Woe-water, I sneezed. By the time I got back to my rooms, I had a full-fledged miserable cold, miserable colds being part of the River of Woe’s magic, I suppose.

Somebody snitched about the cold, too.

Propped against two or three pillows, I lay there with a head that felt like a stuffed squash when knocking came at the door. Bea turned to answer it.

“No!” I whispered. “I’m not here!”

She fluttered uncertainly by the bed.

“Tell him I went exploring. Tell him I got pneumonia and died!” I snarled. “It’d serve him right. This is all his fault!”

She fluttered a moment more, then winked out.

“Whatever.” I turned over and dropped my throbbing, ten-ton head into the pillows.

“Rey.”

I flopped over. Kylo stood there, somehow managing to look both angry and concerned at the same time. Damn Bea, letting him in.

I rolled over again with a grunt.

He laid his hand on my face. I started to jerk away, but the chill of his magic felt like a cool cloth on my hot head.

“You’re feverish.”

“No kidding. I’m sick!”

He removed his hand and let out an exasperated sigh. “Of course you are! Poe told me he’d explained what would happen if you tried to cross that river. It was incredibly foolish and complete unworthy of you.”

And you know what? I was actually ashamed.

“Huh,” I said, the snappiest repartee I could manage at the moment. How was I to know Poe hadn’t been just trying to put the scare into me?

Kylo sighed again. “I’ll be back.”

“Don’t bother,” I muttered. I wasn't sure if he heard me.

Sometime later something scraped at my bedside table. I twitched but managed to keep from jumping. As usual, Kylo had entered in complete silence.

“This may help,” he said.

I just grunted again and stayed curled on my side.

“Shall I help you sit up?”

No _way_ was I going to let him do that. Rolling upright, I said, “Look—”

He turned, lifted a tray from the table and settled it across my lap. Grapefruit. Buttered toast. A steaming cup of tea. Oh, _please_.

“See if I put in enough honey.”

I took a sip. I really couldn’t taste it, but the honey coated my sore throat and the tang of lemon chipped at the brick wall in my head.

“It’s fine.” I grumped.

“Eat.”

I scowled. It looked like I wouldn’t get rid of him until I played the good patient. I dutifully munched toast until a sneezing and coughing fit hit me. He whisked the tray off my lap and a tissue into my hand, which I promptly buried my face in. It was soft and smooth and didn’t rasp my poor nose: one of those tissues with lotion. My eyes streaming, I peered at him.

He settled the tissue box by my elbow. “I would do more, but—” He turned a hand palm up. “This is one area in which my powers don’t help.”

It occurred to me what I must look like, red nose, puffy face, tangled hair and all. Probably the only person who’d ever seen me look worse was Mom, and she was my _mother_ , for the gods’ sake. My hideousness didn’t seem to bother him, though, because he just gazed at me with concern.

I plucked at the covers, tempted to pull them over my head. _Come on, Rey. Who cares?_ It wasn’t like I wanted to look good for him. But I finger-combed at my hair, trying to make it look like I was just raking it back.

 He stood still, hands opening and closing at his sides, He abruptly turned away, toward my dresser. A moment later he turned back with something I couldn’t quite see in his hand.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he leaned toward me, holding out my hairbrush. “Let me…”

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t flinch, but I must’ve been eyeing the brush warily.

He stopped, drew back. Fumbling a little, he reversed it, offering me the handle. I took it, and he got to his feet just as awkwardly.

“I thought— to spare you having to get up—” He made a gesture of frustration. “I’m sorry. I should let you rest.”

He fled—yes, _fled_. Not that he ran from the room or anything, but he left in a serious hurry, and definitely without looking back.

I set the brush on the bedside table, turned over and hugged my pillow. Who cared? There was nobody to look good for.

* * *

But I dragged myself out of bed the next morning to wash up. My skin had that funny prickly-tender feeling of fever and sickness, and I fell back into bed afterwards.

I lay on my side staring at the hairbrush still on my bedside table. When I was younger, Mom used to brush my hair to soothe me when I was sick or sad. My scalp tingled as I imagined the feeling of the brush stroking my hair. But in my imagination, the hand that held it was a man’s, large and strong and gentle…

The door out in the sitting room opened. I snapped my eyes closed as if asleep, changed my mind and turned away from the door, changed it again and wriggled upright, hastily stuffing pillows behind me.

Kylo appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Good morning. I see you’re already awake. Did you sleep well?”

Apparently he’d decided to be Brisk and Cheerful.

“Okay, thanks,” I said.

“Here’s breakfast.” He lowered the tray into my lap.

This morning it was orange juice, hot cereal, jam and a little pitcher of milk. “Thanks,” I said again.

While I poured milk over my cereal, he pulled a chair to the bedside. The hairbrush tugged at me. I refused to look at it, something I wouldn’t have to worry about if he’d just _leave_.

I spooned a bite. He sat silently by me, disturbingly _present_. I took another dogged bite, swallowed.

“I think—” I began just as he said, “I thought—”

We both stopped. Waving for him to go on, I took a sip of orange juice. It was fresh-squeezed. I imagined him with his sleeves rolled up, wearing an apron and juicing oranges in a cavernous, antiseptic kitchen someplace. My heart gave a funny little skip.

“I thought I could read to you, if you’d like.” He held up a thick book he must’ve conjured out of the air, because I hadn’t seen it a moment ago.

_Read_ to me? Well, I guess streaming or satellite TV wasn’t exactly an option here. I stirred my cereal, making jam and milk spirals. I just wanted him to go away, right? I should be mad at him—hate him, even.

Except—I couldn’t. Don’t ask me why, I just couldn’t.

“I doubt I’ll be very good company,” I said to my breakfast.

“That isn’t necessary. Be as comfortable as you can, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

I must be a lot sicker than I thought. That had to be why the proposition held such wistful appeal.

I stirred my cereal some more, which was turning into a purplish gruel. “Okay.”

His flicker of a smile came and went. “Good. Then finish your breakfast.”

He took the tray when I was done and poured fresh, hot tea. When I struggled to rearrange my pillows, he reached behind me to fix them—all quietly, without fuss. Those little things that make you cranky when you’re sick seemed to disappear.

I didn’t even notice it then, because believe me, if I had, _that_ would’ve made me cranky. I just sighed and leaned back, holding tea just the right temperature in my lap. It stayed the right temperature, too, although I didn’t notice that at the time, either.

He got comfortable in his chair, one ankle crossed over his knee, leaned back and opened the book.

It was a Sherlock Holmes story, the one where the butler figures out a riddle to uncover a treasure. I lay against my pillows and watched him.

That dark, intense gaze of his was bent on the book on his knee. His fingers walked down the page as he read, lifted gracefully to the top to turn to the next page. I relaxed, my eyes half-closing. Kylo’s voice alternately took on Sherlock’s ponderous tones, Dr. Watson’s more straightforward speech.

As crappy as I felt, it seemed comforting, natural for him to be there. After all, we were both in the same predicament, both stuck in this cold, dead plane, missing our families, both caught by forces beyond our control —

A jolt went through me like a sudden voice in a room I’d thought was empty. I opened my eyes wide.

What was I thinking? The force beyond _my_ control was Kylo, the very same one sitting in that chair reading the last lines of the story. What was wrong with me?

Frowning, I squirmed in bed. “That’s dumb,” I said when he finished. “If the guy was so smart, he should’ve known better than to ask that girl for help.” I snorted. “Like she’d want anything to do with him after he hurt her.”

Kylo closed the book over a finger. “Maybe in his desperation, he deceived himself.”

“In his greed, you mean. His _selfishness_.”

I wasn’t really irritated, but I didn’t like the weird sympathy I felt. It was wrong. It was flat creepy.

“Yes, he was selfish. And fickle, which is inexcusable.”

“I can think of a few things more inexcusable,” I sniped back.

Bending his head, he stood. “You’re tired. I should let you rest. Shall I bring you anything?”

What did it take to start a fight with him? Why did he have to be so damned patient? Maybe he knew what I doing. Or maybe he felt guilty. Or maybe—

Maybe I spent way too much time thinking about what he thought.

I folded my arms and turned away. “No,” I said. “I don’t want anything.”

He tucked the book under his arm and walked to the door.

My conscience felt like a slug with salt sprinkled on it. “Kylo.”

He turned.

“Thank you.”

His bowed his head. “You’re quite welcome, Rey. It’s my pleasure.”

After he left, I lay staring up at the ceiling. Something inside me whirled. What was I feeling? Okay, besides sick. Maybe I was just getting really lonely. Except loneliness should feel desperate and empty, while I felt…cared for. Protected.

_Excuse_ me? This was my kidnapper!

And that was the Big Problem between us, wasn’t it? My mode of arrival. My enforced stay.

Because of Hux’s damned spell! I raked my hands through my hair and groaned in frustration.

What Kylo had done in bringing me—keeping me—wasn’t even by choice. So then… The illusory sunlight splashed across the carpet seemed to fade. So did that mean his attentiveness was all part of his bewitchment?

Bea drifted in and sat sympathetically on the edge of the bed. It didn’t dip under her. I reached out my hand, and hers curled around it with a prickle of static electricity.

“Oh, Bea,” I whispered. “What am I going to do?”

* * *

As I lay listening for the click of the door, I felt like a cliff diver perched on the edge. Fever, I told myself sternly. That was all that was behind this lightheaded flutter. After all, it wasn’t like there was any novelty to Kylo’s visits. He was quite the devoted nurse for someone who used dead bodies for his magic.

When I heard the door, I put my hands under the covers and locked my fingers together.

Kylo came into the room. Today he was dressed in a grey shirt with the slightest hint of green, the cuffs rolled to his forearms, a more colorful and more casual style than usual. Even his black hair seemed a little more relaxed, not so wild.

He studied me from the doorway. “You look better.” Coming to my bedside, he leaned down, laid his hand on my forehead, my cheek. “You don’t seem feverish any longer.”

I looked up at him, and his fingers lingered on my cheek. Something in his gaze changed—I felt it, an almost physical touch. His magic shivered over me, prickling cold over my skin before molding me with warmth. An answering warmth rushed through me. Under the covers, my own fingers loosened and I stirred. Then his hand fell away.

An involuntary sound escaped me. I coughed to cover it. (Or maybe I just coughed because I still had a cold. Sure, about like that heat that went through me a second ago was fever.)

He turned away, ostensibly to pull up a chair. I was _not_ disappointed.

“No book today?” Okay, maybe I was afraid we weren’t going to have our daily chapter. That was cause for disappointment, right?

“If you’re feeling up to it, we could play a game instead.” He was back to Brisk and Cheerful.

I don’t know why that made me feel even worse.

“A game,” I repeated, imagining something serious and weighty, like chess.

He set a box on top of the covers: Monopoly. A little smile quirked one corner of his mouth. “Go ahead and set up the board.”

What was with the smile? Rearranging myself to make a flat place on the bed, I lifted off the top of the box and unfolded the board, gathering up money, cards, dice. But instead of the usual players’ pieces—the car, the hat, Scotty dog, battleship and so forth, there were only tiny, painted die-cast cars.

I raised my brows in a question.

“Choose yours,” he said.

I shrugged, picked an orange one and rolled the dice.

All of a sudden, I sat behind the wheel of a car driving along the cracked pavement and weedy lots of a downscale neighborhood. A street sign beside me announced, “Baltic Avenue.” It was purple. I squeaked and let go of the wheel, and was back in my bedroom.

“Sorceropoly,” he said, grinning as broadly as the eighteen-year-old versions of himself I’d seen in the memory rooms.

“Sorcer—” I spluttered, then laughter bubbled up.

“You like it,” he said.

Still chuckling, I nodded. “I do. What happens when I buy a house?”

He rolled the dice. “You’ll have to find out.”

I bought up Virginia, States Avenue and St. Charles Place and put my money down for a house as soon as I could.

Standing on the sidewalk beside trees only a little taller than I am, two-by-fours zipped up like a fall of dominoes in reverse, clapboards laddered up the walls, shingles scaled the roof. Before I knew it, the trees shaded a neat, green lawn and curtains peeked around the edges of the windows.

Yes, Sorceropoly was definitely better than the original version. A number of purchases later, Kylo stood on the curving drive of my hilltop trophy house on Pacific Avenue, not coincidentally overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

He raised his brows. “You’ll bankrupt me, Rey.”

“I’m a capitalist, not a philanthropist.”

“I didn’t realize the two were mutually exclusive.”

I grinned. “I’m a _greedy_ capitalist. Don’t you want to see what you’re paying rent for?”

“By all means.” His rueful tone was completely at odds with the sparkle of enjoyment in his eyes.

My cheeks went warm and I ducked my head, but I felt the same pleasure showing him the magnificent view of the ocean out the picture windows, the kitchen with its granite countertops, the private deck off the master suite.

We leaned side-by-side on the redwood railing, looking down cliffs to the water spinning white lace around the rocks. A gull swept silently overhead.

Our elbows just touched. I tucked mine closer to my body and shifted over, comfortable, content to be by him. The salt wind teased our hair, and sunlight hammered a path of pure gold to the horizon…

Except that there was no sunlight, no breeze, no horizon. It was all illusion, every bit of it.

I closed my eyes, shutting out the view. No, not everything was illusion. Kylo was still there. And I still felt—

I pushed away from the railing and went inside. I didn’t look back, but I imagined him gazing after me, confused, uncertain. Tears pushed into my eyes.

“Rey? Are you—”

“Just—running out of steam,” I said quickly, blinking hard.

I turned. He looked just like I’d imagined him. The tears tried to muscle their way in again, but I forced a smile. “It gives me a good excuse to take mercy on you. See, I might be a greedy capitalist, but not a ruthless one.”

“Thank the gods for that. I’m finished if I land on one of your hotels.” This time, his light tone was belied by a searching look.

I turned away again before he could discover more. The beautiful house shimmered back into my beautiful bedroom, Kylo in the chair beside the bed, the Monopoly board between us.

We both gathered up money and deeds, a task that seemed unexpectedly engrossing. Too soon, the lid was back on the box.

He stood and put on a smile—at least, as much of a smile as he ever showed. “I hope you’ll give me a chance to even the score.”

I hated that smile crafted for my benefit. I hated this pretending that everything was all right, the thought of him leaving with that worry and uncertainty.

I hated him leaving, period. I was tired of thinking about all the rest of it—where I was, how I’d gotten here, what was going to happen.

“Aren’t you going to read?” I asked, then realized how petulant and demanding it sounded. “I mean, if you feel like it. If you don’t have anything else to do. Maybe after lunch?”

He bowed his head. When it came up again, the fake smile had vanished. “What would you like to eat? Are you up to something more demanding than chicken noodle soup?”

“Let’s live dangerously. How about French onion?”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finally discovers the terrible truth about Kylo's power and what binds him to his realm.

Let me just say that I might wipe out Kylo in Monopoly every time, but he plays a mean game of Scrabble.

This state of affairs continued through several waxings and wanings of the “moon.” My own cycle corresponded, so I guess the illusion must’ve reflected actual chronological time. And weeds were growing in the illusory meadow outside my bedroom. I wasn’t quite sure why Kylo would add weeds to that beautiful meadow. More verisimilitude, I guess.

But strangely, I was beginning to get used to the place. I didn’t feel so…cut off any more, so deprived and desperate.

You’re probably asking, “What about Mom?” Believe me, so was I.

Every day. I’d promise myself _today_ I’d have a serious talk with Kylo about it. Then I’d see him for the first time that day and watch his grim, dark face glow with that candleflame flicker of a smile. And I’d think: Mom will never forgive him for what he did, spell or no spell. I’ll end up having to choose which one to hurt. Or, vaguely: I can’t trust Luke to stay out of my business and not mess everything up.

And the quietest, most frightening whisper of all: Hux will take off the spell, and then what?

These kinds of thoughts must’ve been what led to the dream.

In it, I was sitting in one of several rows of chairs in a room. Mom and Finn sat on one side of me, Luke and Hux on the other. I wondered what we were doing there, then I gradually noticed that Mom was dressed all in black. That was weird. Mom never dressed in black. So were Finn and Luke and Hux. A big, wooden planter sat on a table in front of us, and it held a Night’s Crown unfurling leaves and brilliant white flowers as we watched.

Mom was crying—sobbing. “It’s dead,” she kept saying over and over. “How can it be dead?”

Her grief wrung me. I was afraid I’d start crying myself. I put my arms around her and held her, stroked her hair, took off her glasses and kissed her wet cheek. “No, Mom, look at it. It’s alive—it’s growing. Can’t you see? Look how beautiful it is!”

You know how in dreams things change from one into another? Well, when I looked up again, the Night’s Crown in the wooden planter had changed into a coffin, and Mom wasn’t saying, “It’s dead,” she was saying, “ _She’s_ dead.”

“She should’ve listened to me,” Luke said. “If she’d gotten married like I said, none of this would’ve happened.”

Hux threw an arm over the back of his chair. “Serves her right, after what she did to me.”

Finn wasn’t crying, but his face was hard and blank.

“It’s all my fault. I didn’t help her. It’s all my fault.” He rocked in time to the words, as if to a song.

I reached across Mom to grab Finn’s hand. “No, listen, I’m fine, really! I’m happy with Kylo. We got off to a bad start, but everything’s okay now that I understand.”

Believe it or not, this made perfect sense in the dream.

Mom stood up as if I wasn’t there, as if she couldn’t feel my arms around her, and approached the coffin. “Goodbye, baby. I’ll never stop missing you.”

“But Mom, I’m here!” I stood too.

Standing, I could see into the coffin. I could see myself, in the coffin. Like they always say at funerals, I looked peaceful.

Mom had a coin in her hand, a gold coin the size of a silver dollar. She lifted the dead hand of the me in the coffin, kissed the fingers and tucked the coin into them. “There, baby. That’ll get you where you need to go.”

I stared in horror. Poe, Rose, Amilyn and Phasma suddenly stood in a line on the other side of the casket. I wanted to take the coin out of my dead hand, but then I’d still be holding it.

I looked up at them. “She doesn’t know what it means.”

All three women grinned, showing their jaguar teeth. “Dinner tonight,” Phasma said, licking her lips. Her tongue was long and pink, like an animal’s.

“It’s a mistake,” I pleaded. “I haven’t done anything to deserve it!”

Poe shook his head. “You got the coin. It says you do.”

Beside me, Mom was sobbing so hard I thought she’d collapse.

“Oh gods, Mom. Please don’t cry.” Finally crying myself, I reached for her, but she wasn’t there.

And then I woke up. My eyes were dry, but I gulped down sobs. How long had I been here? Months. And Mom, oh, Mom—

I scrambled out of bed. My hands shook as I got dressed, just putting on the first things I grabbed out of the closet.

I’d never tried hard enough to get out of here. If nothing else, I could’ve gone on that hunger strike. Kylo couldn’t just let me starve to death. After all, what would be the point?

I ran out of my room and along the hallway, burst through the door into the black hall. The magic there pulsed and surged as I’d never felt it before. Bea drifted toward me from somewhere.

“Where’s Kylo?” I asked her.

She hestitated, fluttering, then moved toward the door I’d just come through. Cursing, I strode out into the hall. Even with the ring, the magic shoved at me, pushing me back. That was answer enough. Leaning forward, I struggled against the current that coursed away from the throne room door.

Yeah, I know. It was like in a low-budget thriller, where the heroine knows there’s a killer on the loose but when she hears something in the basement, she creeps down there anyway. Duh. Even when Bea put herself in front of me, I kept going. Because I wasn’t really thinking about all this resistance as any kind of warning, but rather as another ploy to keep me here, while my mother was surely going crazy with grief at home.

I flung open the doors. I hadn’t been in Kylo’s throne room since the first time. It looked now exactly as it had then, writhing fires, obsidian throne, cloaked and helmeted Dark Lord and all.

A couple of unidentifiable heaps lay on the floor at the bottom of the dais steps, but the figure standing beside them was definitely Poe. Chewbacca, standing with his arms folded by the door, turned his head when I entered.

“Rey!” he said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Sorry,” I said, striding forward. “It’s important.”

The leaping fires whispered unintelligible words in my ears as I walked between them. I ignored them. Poe turned toward me, dismay on his face.

On the throne, Kylo towered to his feet. “Leave, Rey.” His voice boomed ominously from his helmet. “Now.”

Any other time, I might’ve been intimidated or outraged by the tone of command.

“Kylo, we’ve got to talk. Now.”

I still couldn’t quite figure out what the heaps on the floor were. One looked like a scarecrow, clothes on a frame of crumpled sticks. The other was more of a pile. Then the pile moved and a man’s face peered out of it.

I stopped, startled, confused. The pile rose and transformed into a man, a man I’d never seen before.

Like some kind of dangerous animal, he went from a crouch to hurtling toward me all in one motion. Metal glinted in his hand. Poe moved, reaching. Snarling came from behind me, the thump of heavy feet on stone.

I think I moved. I’m sure I must’ve—I couldn’t have frozen like a stupid rabbit while that man lunged for me, while Poe lunged for him.

Kylo took a few steps down, his gloved hand outstretched, fingers crooked, grasping, and in an awful voice thundered, “ _You will not touch her!_ ”

One second the guy was coming at me with a face full of cruelty and ugliness. Then he—he _withered_ in front of me. The reaching hands and arms turned into bundles of sticks, the knife clattered to the floor. The face…

Oh, gods, the face. It was like watching a time-lapse recording of something dead and rotting. The skin crinkled up, brown and tight against the bone underneath. The lips pulled back in a rictus grin, eyeballs shriveled like raisins, the eyelids turned into translucent membranes, the nose collapsed into the hole underneath it.

The hideous stick fingers scraped down my neck, my front, and the—the _thing_ struck me with a dry crunch and a puff of death smell.

I stumbled and fell, my mouth wide open and nothing coming out. Poe snatched the husk off me, and Kylo came down the dais steps in a rush and a swirl of black cloak. He lifted me, folded me against him, straining me close.

“Rey,” he said. “Rey.”

I was cold, so cold, shivering. I could still smell it, the stink of sweat and fear, the reek of something dead. My cold cheek was pressed against Kylo’s chest. Magic surged and prickled, icy, powerful, yet warm and enveloping.

I stared at the sticks inside the clothes. Two piles, two scarecrows lying on the black floor, withered pumpkin faces gaping at me, the one who had just died, the one that had been dead already. A gold coin glinted on the floor between them.

Still shaking, I pushed away, away from the things on the floor, away from Kylo.

“Rey,” he said again, reaching for me. “I have no choice—”

I staggered backward, out of his reach. My mouth worked, but nothing came out.

_Lord of Death Lord of Death_ hiccupped through my mind. He powers his magic with death, someone had told me. Death. They don’t stay alive long. Nothing lives here. Nothing _can_ live here. Nothing. But. Him.

I whirled and bolted down the causeway. Chewbacca stood between me and the door, a shaggy, towering monster. I ran toward him, though, rather than stop or turn. He scrambled out of my way and I was through the doors.

There in the black hall, I faltered. The doors were all closed against me. Magic hammered at me. I spun, dizzy, gagging. My thoughts spun, too, beating like bees trapped in a jar.

A girl in a long, flowing dress appeared in front of me—no, not a girl. A ghost. Bea. She put her cold, tingly hands on my cheeks and held me, held me looking into her faceless face until I stopped twitching and whimpering. Then she swept me up, steering me toward the door with the armored figure.

“No.” I could get that much out coherently.

The door opened and I stumbled through, Bea still guiding me.

Chewbacca wasn’t there. I looked around for him, bewildered, then remembered he was in Kylo’s throne room. At first I thought she would take me through the door to Kylo’s memories.

Panting, I was about to plant my feet when she turned the other way, towing me toward the maze of doors and hallways and staircases, where I’d never been.

I went with her. I was still panicky enough to associate somewhere I’d never been with somewhere Kylo wouldn’t look for me. We climbed stairs, hurried along a curving, black-and-white tiled hallway and through a door.

Chewbacca had told me this was the specters’ place, and that they could frighten. Poe had said the master wanted nothing to do with them. If I’d been capable of putting two and two together at that point, I never would’ve let Bea drag me in there.

The place was a waking nightmare.

Specters committed murder, over and over again, always for greed, for lust, for simple, naked cruelty. Killing with every kind of weapon or no weapon at all. Innocent people set up for something they had that another wanted, victims tortured and slaughtered for the sheer, sick joy of it.

I would have torn away from Bea and run, but I didn’t know the way, how to get out of this terrible place. Relentless, she dragged me on.

Finally, another door opened. I wanted to close my eyes, but the screams and pleas and sounds of carnage were worse that way. And so when we walked out onto someone’s screened porch where a girl with long, dark-blond hair sat on a wicker settee, I was ready, if one can ever be ready for that kind of thing, for the rapist or greedy relative who would end her young life.

She wore a long dress. Something about her seemed awfully familiar, but I couldn’t think where I’d seen her before.

I flinched when the door to the house opened, spilling light onto the dim porch, but the girl looked up and smiled. “Took your time, didn’t you?”

Kylo stepped through the door—Kylo as a young man near my age, maybe a year or two older.

“No,” I said and backed toward the door.

Bea blocked the way, holding out her hands in a pleading gesture. I thought of what lay outside the door and stopped.

Kylo balanced a couple of glasses and a plate with a big slice of red velvet cake and two forks. In spite of having his hands full, he nudged the door open with his elbow—the sort of inconvenience a sorcerer has no need to endure.

“Admit it,” he said. “You can’t live without me.”

“You know I can’t.” The young woman patted the seat beside her. “C’mere.”

He sat, handing her a glass and arranging the plate on his knee.

She gave a sly smile and put the glass on the little table beside her. “Thanks, that’s sweet, but I know something sweeter.”

She took the cake from him and put it on the table, too. Sliding an arm around his neck, she pulled him to her and they started kissing.

My face going hot, I turned away. “I don’t want to see this. Take me back—get me out of here.”

Bea shook her head, took my arms and turned me back. It was like the scenes outside—watch or listen. Either way, I couldn’t escape.

It was pretty clear they’d been an item for some time, because there was no shyness or first-time eagerness between them. It wasn’t so much now that I didn’t want anywhere near Kylo, not even his memories, but that I felt like a voyeur. It was like the problems my magic caused all over again.

I turned away again. “No, Bea. I’m telling you, I don’t want to watch—”

Wait, I thought. This was the old Kylo, the one who smiled and laughed. One who, apparently, still didn’t have any magic. _And he’s older than me._ How could that be?

All of a sudden, there was silence. Then Kylo said, “Bea?”

I spun. He wasn’t looking up at my Bea, the shade standing beside me, he was speaking to the woman in his arms.

“Bea, what’s wrong?”

Light glimmered on her arm where it hung down, slack. The shadow of his hand groped across the wall above him, then the porch light flicked on.

But his hand was still a good six inches from the switch.

Wait—could I be seeing the moment his powers first manifested?

He wasn’t looking at anything but the woman. Her head had rolled to the side, and her hair curtained her face. Bea—his Bea, my Bea.

I snapped around to stare at the glimmering shade beside me. My stomach felt like it shrank and disappeared with a small pop, then Kylo spoke again.

“Come on, Bea, quit fooling around.” He lifted her, but she lolled slack as a rag doll. A doll with the stuffing coming out. “Bea?” His voice went up in the beginnings of terror. She wilted like a broken flower in a freezing wind. Kylo staggered away. “Bea, oh gods, Bea!”

A light blinked on in the house, then another. Footsteps ran across the floor.

“Kylo!” a woman’s voice said. The door burst open, and his stepmother ran out, wearing only her nightgown. “What’s wrong?”

Hunched over Bea, Kylo made a harsh, sobbing sound. “Qi’ra, you’ve got to help her, I don’t know what happened!”

She hurried across the porch. “Let me see. Come on, Kylo.”

She put out her hand. Still making those awful, wracking sobs, he grabbed it. _And she collapsed._

It happened faster this time, the withering, the flattening.

“Qi’ra!” he screamed, scrabbling backward across the porch. He ran into a chair, and it toppled with a squeak of wicker.

More footsteps, then his father spilled out.

“No!” I shouted, leaping at him.

It happened again, it had already happened years ago—there was no stopping it. The two faces, so alike, mirrored horror, then Kylo’s father fell to his knees beside the withered husk of his wife.

“Fix her, Dad,” Kylo sobbed, childlike, crawling toward him. “Put her back the way she was!”

He didn’t even touch his father—the violence of his emotions made it unnecessary. And his father joined his mother, a bundle of brown sticks in boxer shorts—three scarecrows lying on the porch.

Kylo screamed. And screamed, and screamed—

Sobbing, sobbing as hard and harshly as Kylo had been, I jammed my hands over my ears and ran into the house. The screams stopped abruptly as I stumbled into another memory, but the nightmare didn’t.

Death, death, death, over and over. His brother and sisters first, though he screamed at them to keep away, get away, no, no. His big, ugly dog, old and arthritic now, the fish, the finches, every creature he loved. Neighbors. Friends. Ambulance drivers. Police officers. Birds dropped out of trees that blackened and withered.

I blundered sobbing through it, as unable to escape as Kylo. Then Bea was there, holding my hand, drawing me through the nightmares, the kind you can never wake up from because they’re real. The specters’ casual murders afterwards were nothing now, just the gratuitous gore of movies.

Finally, finally, the door that opened showed the black-and-white tiled foyer. Chewbacca paced there now. His head jerked around when I staggered through that door. I was sobbing so hard I could scarcely stand.

“Rey!” he said. “Are you well? We’ve been searching everywhere for you!”

I ran to him, flung my arms around his waist. “Oh, Chewbacca. His magic is as bad as mine—no, worse. Everything _dies!_ How can he stand it?”

His hand engulfed my head, stroking my hair. “Who, my dear? What has made you cry?”

“Kylo!” I gulped down sobs and let go. Wiping my face, I took a few steps toward the door. “Where is he?”

“That’s why I was seeking you—”

“Is he where I left him?” I broke in. I had a bad feeling about this. A very, very bad feeling.

“Yes, but—”

I darted for the door before he could finish.

The black hall was bereft of magic, as still as the moment before the bullet slams home.

“Oh, gods,” I muttered. If Kylo had finally gotten desperate enough to— because of me— No. Not now. Not when I finally understood—

I ran for the throne room doors, yanked them open and flung myself through.

Kylo, at the far end of the room on his throne, stood up. He still wore the Dark Lord outfit, but the helmet was gone.

I, on the other hand, almost collapsed with relief to see him whole and well.

“Kylo, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—” I stopped, because someone stepped out of the glare of the fires. For a second I thought it was Poe, but this person was too tall and slim. It couldn’t be— “ _Hux?_ ”

Holding out his hands, he walked toward me. “Rey, are you all right? I didn’t know what I’d find.”

I was almost as disoriented as when Kylo had first brought me here: one shock after another. “What are you doing here?”

Hux took my hands and squeezed them, real, living flesh, with a living heart pushing warm blood through the veins. Here. How?

“Come on, Rey,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is _not_ happy when he discovers that Hux's spell was what made him kidnap Rey. Rey has her own reasons for being unhappy about the revelation.

“Home?” I repeated, staring at Hux in complete confusion.

I should’ve been happy. I _was_ happy, but my happiness had a bump on the head and felt a little queasy.

Then Kylo said, “That’s still under negotiation.”

“What?” I said profoundly.

Kylo sat down and leaned an elbow on the arm of his throne. “Seems you’re far more valuable than I’d realized. Did you know you’re worth as many women as I’d like?”

I looked back and forth between them. “What are you saying?”

Kylo smiled. It was not the same smile as when he’d watched his family at Yuletide.

“Hux proposes a trade. He tells me there are women by the score who would give… _anything_ …to be with a man like me. If I let you go, he’ll gladly provide them.”

I just stood there for a minute, choking on a chunk of disgust.

Hux clasped my hand tighter. “Whatever it takes to bring her home.”

Did he know? Did he have any idea what the results of that kind bargain would be? How Kylo’s magic worked, why Kylo was here, utterly alone, to begin with? Or was he just horse trading, like I was some prize mare?

Kylo’s face was a mask of calm. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw a flicker of my own contempt.

“And?” I said.

“Well,” he said. “ _I_ thought I’d leave it up to you, as you’re the principal.”

Now Hux was the one who looked dumbfounded.

A sense of satisfaction surged through me so powerful, it was all I could do not to grin.

I yanked my hand free. “Why are you here, Hux?”

If possible, he looked even more befuddled than before. “I told you. To take—”

I gave a snort of disbelief. “Excuse me, but do you really believe I’ll go anywhere with you after what you did?”

He put on a convincingly hurt and baffled face. “What did I do?”

“You’re the one who put the damned spell on him in the first place!” I stabbed a finger up at Kylo. “Are you trying to tell me you just now figured out where I was?”

“What spell?” he said quickly—a little too quickly. “He’d notice any magic I did on him.”

“Exactly what I’ve pointed out a number of times,” Kylo said from on high. “I haven’t yet convinced her.”

I wrestled with a powerful desire to smack Hux. “Yeah, _sure_ there’s no spell.” I said as pleasantly as I could manage. “Only the one you _pretended_ to put on him after my—” I made air quotes. “— _conquest_ at the plant show. Gosh, what a miracle of deduction that you ever found me. I’m impressed. Aren’t you impressed, Kylo?”

“Very impressed,” he replied.

Hux took me by the arms. “Rey, what’s wrong with you? Has he brainwashed you?”

He had the dashing hero down pat. All he needed was the cleft chin.

I shrugged out of his grasp. “You want to know what’s wrong? I’ll tell you. You’ve known where I was all along, because you might be a lot of things, Hux, but stupid isn’t one of them. Luke knew about the spell, too, didn’t he? He must have, since he quit harassing Mom and me after the plant show.”

His red brows came down. “I told him it wasn’t necessary—” He shut his mouth.

I gave a thin, hard smile. “Yes? Go on.”

“Kylo seemed to have captured your interest,” he said smoothly. “How was I to know you’d come here unwillingly?” He glanced at Kylo.

So did I, and saw what all those specters must’ve seen before he dispensed…justice. Then Hux’s words caught me. I paused, running our conversation back through my head.

“Well, Hux,” I said, “since you didn’t think I was here against my will, why would I need rescuing?”

“You said— This place— I mean, it’s obvious—” He spluttered to a stop.

“You’ve been negotiating with me as if Rey were my unwilling guest,” Kylo said.

Hux opened and shut his mouth.

I folded my arms. “Gotcha.”

There was silence while Kylo and I stared at Hux, who looked like he’d forgotten his lines on opening night.

Finally, Kylo said, “How did you come here, Hux?” He spoke with the calmness of a judge.

The fires writhed up, hissing incomprehensible words. It was impossible to tell if Hux was pale in that leaping, ruddy light, but sweat sparkled on his upper lip. “Leia…”

“Ah,” Kylo said. “She opened the way? And shielded you from my magic?”

“Yes.” The voice of the fire almost ate Hux’s single word.

“Yes,” Kylo echoed. “And why should my own mother help you?”

I should’ve been wondering the same thing, but all I could think was, _What? Leia, his_ mother?

Hux’s eyes darted as if seeking escape. “She said because I— Since it’s my—” Then he burst out, “It was only a joke! How was I to know what you’d do?”

“Finally!” I said. “You admit you put a spell on him!”

Power like a blast of icy air suddenly shivered off Kylo.

“So,” he said. “The shielding that allowed me to attend the plant show must have blunted my ability to sense your magic. I see.”

It looked like he _did_ see, too. Fury chased mortification chased appalled realization across his face, as if Hux’s sort-of confession had undone the spell.

A poisonous vine suddenly seemed to twist around my windpipe, and I tore my gaze from what else I might see in Kylo’s face.

White edges cracked around the edges of the fires, as if the flames themselves were freezing. He stood, took the dais steps slowly. His cloak slithered down behind him like a shadowy liquid.

“You’ve made me wrong Rey.” Even with the softness of his voice, I could hear the same humiliation and fury.

He had a right to be mad, but I couldn’t stand to see him ashamed. “You were wronged, too, Kylo.”

Hux shot me a panicked, outraged glance.

Turning my comment aside with one black-gloved hand, Kylo continued, still addressing Hux, “You’ve reduced me to the level of those who find their way here to me. You’ve made me a thief and worse.” His eyes narrowed as he took a step down, then another. “A _kidnapper_.”

Oh, damn. I took a couple of steps that put me between them. “Excuse me,” I said to Kylo, “but you were under duress. People under duress aren’t responsible for what they do.”

Much as I detested Hux, I did _not_ want to see him end up a scarecrow at the bottom of the dais steps. And Kylo seemed angry enough for that to happen, whether he intended it or not.

Rounding on Hux, I demanded, “Why are you here? What do you expect to get out of it? Just go away!”

“This is your fault!” he blurted out. “You were so uptight! Any other girl would’ve—”

“Any other girl would’ve just melted when some asshole grabbed her like she was a nice, juicy piece of meat and tried to take a bite out of her face?” I interrupted. “Really?”

Kylo surged down the last step. He and Hux were nearly the same height, but with all his black, the look of cold fury on his face, Kylo was far more menacing.

“You—” His hand shot out as if to seize Hux by the arm or shoulder, but I caught his forearm. He dropped his hand. The muscles of his jaw bunched. At last he said, “Get out of here. What comes here, stays. Don’t tempt me to keep you too.”

Hux stepped back, brushing imaginary dust from his clothes, but I saw how his hands shook. “Fine by me. I wanted to see how far Maz would go, anyway. Luke and Leia are the squeamish ones.”

I felt like I’d tripped and fallen into icy water. “Wait a minute. What’s going on with Mom?”

“Poor Maz.” Hux tutted, then said in a pouty voice, “She wants her baby back. Who knew she had it in her, the gentle earth sorceress puttering in the fields with the duds?” He shot Kylo a vindictive glance. “She’s been working hard—blights, drought, floods, storms. Hope you don’t mind the competition.”

At some point, Kylo had put his arm around me. Now his grip tightened. “ _Get out_ ,” he grated.

Hux’s nasty look slid to me. “See, Rey? Things are working out just the way your honey likes them. He _likes_ ’em dead.”

Kylo released me and took a step, but Hux hurriedly backed up, turned his back on us both and stalked off down the causeway.

The doors closed behind him with a boom. The echo washed through me like ripples of sewage sludge.

Kylo looked down at me. I couldn’t look at him.

“I didn’t even say to tell Mom I’m okay,” I said, my voice quavering. “I didn’t ask him to bring her.”

“Rey—”

I held up a hand. “I’m really tired. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll just go lie down.”

I wobbled off down the causeway. The fires didn’t whisper in my ears this time, but my conscience more than made up for it.

People were dying because of me, if I could believe Hux’s nasty little parting hints. But people would die if I’d agreed to a trade, too. And now that the spell was gone—

How long before Kylo’s humiliation made him hate me? He’d been made into what he detested because of me. He’d been forced into emotions that weren’t even his own.

My stomach lurched over and my throat locked up again. Gods, it sounded like some kind of rape. It _was_ , just not the physical kind.

All of a sudden, I was outside my door. I opened it, crossed to my bedroom and sank down on the bed.

Bea came in and knelt beside it. I tried to whip up the desperation that had tortured me in those early days here, but I only felt…what? Tired. Exhausted. Incapable of thinking, but that was all.

Someone—okay, yes, Kylo—knocked at the door, but I just lay there, staring at the ceiling.

Bea got up and drifted that way. A minute later she came back in, Kylo behind her. He stood by the bed a moment, looking down at me, then sat. Neither of us spoke, and Bea drifted off again. _Here it comes_ , I thought.

“I’m sorry, Rey,” he said.

That was definitely not what I expected. I hazarded a glance at him. “It’s not your fault.”

“It _is_ my fault.” He paused, long and painfully, then put a hand over his face. “It seemed so natural. So _reasonable_ to bring you here.”

I sat up. “Kylo, he admitted about the spell.”

He dropped his hand. “The spell doesn’t excuse it. Look what I’ve done to you! Exactly what _he_ did, forcing himself on you.”

“You have it backw—”

“When I think of that,” he persisted, “I could—” He clenched a fist.

The chill crackle of magic, like a rush of cold air ahead of an avalanche, buffeted me. I took his fist in both my hands.

He looked down, loosened the fist and closed his fingers around mine. The ominous sense of gathering magic subsided. I just kept my mouth shut, afraid of where this subject might lead.

“No. I won’t inflict on you again what I do. What I—have to do.” He fell silent.

Stroking my hand as if soothing some distressed creature, he went on, “When my magic first came to me, I struck the earth with my fist, wanting only to sink into it. Instead, I found myself in this place. I’ve been here so long, Rey, here where my powers can harm nothing. I created this palace, the rooms of my memory to visit sometimes. My sole source of companionship was a few shades, Poe and Chewbacca, as well as the very worst I can find of cold-blooded murderers.”

“But how…?” I ventured. “You came to the plant show.”

“That was my mother’s doing, and it took all her great sorcery to make possible that short visit. And even so, I had to be careful not to touch anyone.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I let myself be convinced to take part in such recklessness. Except that I was beyond desperation, and my mother had promised me a gift.” He looked up. “The plant you made. And then you laughed and took my hand… Was it only Hux’s magic that made me want to hear your laugh again? That made me want to keep your hand in mine? I can’t believe any spell could give so much pleasure, such joy, such hope.”

I suddenly remembered that we’d met at the Night’s Crown _before_ Hux had cast his spell. Sunlight burst in my chest. He’d felt like that _before_ the spell. Before!

“Maybe you’ve learned to control your power, Kylo,” I said, like a little kid who thinks if you believe in something hard enough, it’ll come true.

“I still have to feed my magic, the way magic must be fed,” he said bitterly. “I told you I’m the most powerful sorcerer you’ll ever see, but my magic is a ruthless master. The source of my power— You saw. You can’t imagine what—what it was like—in the world of life.”

I gripped his hand tighter. Bowing his head, he took my other hand, held both between his own. I wanted to smooth back his black hair, tell him I understood, I’d seen.

But how could I really know what it was like to kill everything I loved, to have to live in this dim, bleak place, without hope, always alone?

“I can no more help what I do than I can help breathing. I can only make it…” He turned his head, wincing away as if in pain. “…easier on my conscience. But what I learned today from Hux—that, I can help. That, I won’t allow to continue.” He raised his head. “I’m sending you home.”

“Home?” I repeated. Oh, gods. Here it was, and I’d thought—it had seemed like—

His jaw worked as if he struggled to hold something back—or to speak.

“I love you, Rey,” he finally said. “The spell might’ve convinced me to bring you here the way I did, but it has nothing to do with how I feel. It can’t force me to keep you now, when what I feel for you tells me otherwise.”

Tears abruptly overflowed. Dammit! Why was I crying now?

“ _If_ Mom is really doing what Hux said,” I said angrily. “ _If_ he’s not just lying to get at me, all I have to do is tell her—show her—I’m okay. Then I can come back.” At the set expression on his face, I said, “I _will_. You’ll open the way for me, won’t you?”

He gave a sad quirk of a smile. “You’re an earth sorceress. You require life even as I require—” He stopped, then went on, “How could I be happy knowing you’re compelled into my company, as the only living thing here? It would be no different than the months I already kept you prisoner.”

All this time I’d felt like a tropical orchid that had fallen off the back of a truck in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Now I shriveled at the thought of never seeing Kylo again. If only I could change his mind!

“What did you ask Leia for?” I demanded. “The thing she wouldn’t give you, when she gave you the Night’s Crown instead?”

He squeezed my fingers and continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “You can’t stay here out of pity. I only hoped to make you think a little better of me…than I deserve, maybe.”

He hadn’t answered me. But his non-answer gave me a pretty good idea of what he’d asked for—an end.

I started crying in earnest, although I managed not to sob. “It isn’t pity!”

“It is when you have no joy in what you do,” he said gently.

“But I—!”

He bent his head, kissed my fingers and loosed them. “Take what you wish—clothes, the Night’s Crown. Anything.”

He stood and pulled me to my feet. _I will have joy in staying with you!_ I wanted to argue. But could I say it truthfully?

“I—” My voice broke. “I’ll be right back,” I muttered, trailed into the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the tub. Somehow, I didn’t feel quite as distressed in here. The drain mold, probably.  

The way I look, I always had to suspect guys of only caring about…well, what’s under my clothes. Hux being a perfect case in point. Kylo had proven—was proving at that moment—that he cared for _me_. How could I turn my back on that forever? I loved Mom, missed her, wanted to see Finn and my friends again, but they couldn’t offer Kylo’s devotion, his concern, his gentleness…his love.

I took a tissue and wiped my face. Could he be right? If I stayed here, would I be like those destitute young couples who swear their love is all that matters, only to discover that poverty tends to put a real damper on romance? I _did_ need living and growing things around me. And Kylo _was_ the only other living thing here. Well, the only living thing besides drain mold and the Night’s Crown. Was that the only attraction to him—my magic asserting its need? That, and pity, as he said?

I dropped my head into my hands. I didn’t know what I felt. I didn’t know what I thought. Gods. How did everything get to be so complicated?

“Rey?” Kylo called from the bedroom. “Are you all right?”

The tissue in my fist was sodden. I grabbed another and wiped my face again. “I’m fine. Just fine.” I didn’t sound fine, though. My voice trembled like…like I was crying.

Sure enough, he showed up in the doorway. Taking one grieved look at me, he said, “Rey—” Suddenly, he sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

I sniffed, too, pretending I was only trying to identify what he smelled. “Oh,” I quavered. “The drain.”

His brows drew together a little. “What do you mean?”

After everything, here we were talking about the drain. “You know, slime growing in the drain. That’s what’s making the smell.”

He gave me a single, sharp glance and strode out. Bewildered, I got up and followed.

The French doors sprang open ahead of him. Outside, the meadow had been turning grey with the coming “dawn.”

In an instant it was fully light, the meadow gone. In its place was a dip and swell of rock and gravel under a blank, blazing white sky. But the landscape wasn’t barren.

Greenery wandered in an uneven line from the porch down a gentle slope. It pooled in a rough circle about ten feet wide, the very spot, if I wasn’t mistaken, where I’d sat and tried to open the way home my first day here. The growth wasn’t anything beautiful or exciting like the Night’s Crown, just common weeds—mallow, foxtail, burrclover, dandelion, the kinds of things that might’ve left seeds in the mud on a pair of dirty overalls.

Green. Growing. Alive. Here, in this place where nothing could live.

Kylo walked out onto the porch, his head slowly turning from side to side. I couldn’t tell if he was shaking it in amazement or looking around the meadow. The air outside wafted in a scent of growing things.

I wobbled, so I put my hand on the back of a chair.

No wonder I’d been feeling better lately. “How—how did you do that? I thought—” I bit back reminding him what his magic did.

“I didn’t do this.” He shook his head and whispered in disbelief, “They aren’t dying.”

I trailed after him as my mind turned over, _tock, tock, tock_ , like a pendulum clock approaching the hour. Then realization struck.

“ _My_ magic did this,” I said in a small, astonished voice. It wasn’t just the oddity of the Night’s Crown.

It wasn’t just the unlikelihood of my immunity. _It could make anything live and grow here_. Here, under the influence of magic as uncontrollably lethal as mine was uncontrollably fruitful.

I couldn’t believe it any more than Kylo could.

He spun and caught me by the shoulders. “Do you have any idea what a miracle this is?” His face was alight with amazement, with joy.

“Do _you?_ ” I asked. “They aren’t growing like crazy things. They’re just…” I gestured, as amazed as he was. “…sitting there like rational plants.”

I don’t know if he heard me—he just gripped my shoulders and stared outside. Slow certainty began to sprout like a seed in me.

I raised my hand, touched his cheek, the curve of his smile. “Kylo.”

He looked down at me, his face full of bewildered joy and disbelief.

“Do you know what this means?” I asked myself as much as him, because it meant my magic _couldn’t_ be compelling me toward him. “It means I can stay with you.”

Turning away, he leaned on the railing and gripped it hard. “Rey, don’t.”

My stomach did the same thing his hands were doing to the railing. “You don’t want me here?”

He looked a little like a man on a desert island watching his rescue boat sink. “Gods, it isn’t that.” He lifted one hand, made a wild gesture. “I can’t let you bury yourself in this place!”

What was going on? Why was he upset?

“Kylo, I—”

“Don’t you see, Rey? You’d have to stay _here_. Month after month, year after year. And I—” He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw. Then he grated, “I can never go with you. I’ll have to let you go, and when you choose to return, I’ll have to let you go all over again, never knowing if next time you’ll be able to bear coming back to me—”

He raised his head suddenly, looked past me. The furious anguish on his face subsided beneath a mask of imperfect calm. “Bea? What is it?”

I turned quickly. Bea hovered on the patch of weeds beyond the porch. My face went hot.

It was silly, really. After all, she was dead. Just a memory, Kylo had said. But she was my friend, and she’d loved him first.

She drifted shimmering across the green, following it like a path to us. As always, her face was turned away, but she took my hand. The stone in the ring Kylo had given me glittered like a raindrop when she pressed my hand to her cheek. She reached for Kylo’s hand, pressed it to her other cheek.

“Oh, Bea,” I said.

Sorrow, confusion, hopeless love fluttered around in me like trapped sparrows. Kylo’s face worked and his magic crackled in the air, nipping at the edges of leaves, prickling my skin.

And then Bea started to glow.

At first I thought what she felt must be shining through her. But the glow became brighter, thinner, taller, arching upward and outward, torchlike. Our hands no longer rested on Bea’s cold, static-crackly cheek, but rather on each other's. Kylo’s magic, hot-cold like icy water, mixed with the familiar doglike exuberance of mine, twining into the brilliant green-white glow that was Bea.

I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but it didn’t look like it was doing her any good. As a matter of fact, that glow completely engulfed her.

I tried to snatch my hand away. I was pretty sure Kylo wasn’t holding it, but I couldn’t pull away. And of course, my magic wasn’t about to flick off the switch just because that’s what I wanted.

Kylo, however, had a lot more years of wrestling with willful, recalcitrant magic than I did. Finally, he wrenched his hand out. Mine came with it, fingers tangled with his.

“Bea!” I said, and—duh—reached for the glow again.

It was already fading, shrinking to a thin, white column. When my hand reached in, it touched smooth bark. Dancing leaves with white undersides rustled over my head, as if with whispery laughter.

Kylo ran tentative fingers along the trunk. “A tree,” he said wonderingly.

“White poplar,” I corrected automatically.

He looked a lot like I must’ve when he first brought me to his realm. “She’s—she was—only a shade. All she did was a reflection of my wishes. She had nothing in her—no soul—how could she have done more?”

“Why?” I demanded. “Why did she make us turn her into a tree?”

The shadows of her leaves made lace where a patch of dandelions pushed through the gravel. A thought—a feeling as impossible and insubstantial as those leaf shadows—brushed through my mind.

I took his hand. “Come with me.”

I stepped off the porch, pulling him with me. He hesitated, glancing past me at the straggling growth of weeds, but I kept tugging. Finally he stepped onto a patch of mallow.

I remembered those dead spots in the lawn like footprints so long ago. Urging him on, I watched the mallows. When he lifted his booted foot, the little round, crinkly leaves slowly sprang back upright. Yellow dandelion flowers brushed his boots. Burrclover nodded in the slight breeze of his movement.

“Touch them,” I said.

As if hypnotized, he bent slowly and ran a brilliant green blade of foxtail through his fingers.

He straightened, reached up, traced the outline of a leaf—Bea’s leaf—with one finger. It flashed like wings, green and white.

“We did this,” he said. “We. With our magic. Together. She wanted us—me—to understand.”

And he laughed. He picked me up and swung me around, laughing.

It’s not easy to think—much less talk—when you’re being spun around in circles, but by the time he put me down, I’d managed to put two and two together.

“You don’t have to stay here.”

He smiled down at me like a floodlight at a grand opening. “Not while I’m with you.”

I looked up into the branches of Bea’s tree. The leaves fluttered, dancing with life. With _life_. Looking at Kylo again, I saw the joyful, buoyant face I’d only seen in the rooms behind Chewbacca’s door.

Pity was definitely not part of the picture here.

I held out my hands. The blue stone of the ring he’d given me sparkled in the flat, white light.

“Kylo.” I pulled off the ring, slipped it onto my left hand. “Let’s get married.”

I tucked my fingers into the front of his shirt and pulled. His eyes went wide, but he didn’t resist. Then I kissed him a little more suggestively than his stepmom had kissed his father the first time I’d seen them.

I don’t know what it did to him, but as far as I was concerned, whoa!

He closed his eyes and took a long breath. Opening them again, he lifted his hands and ran his fingers through my hair. My knees nearly went out from under me right there.

Fortunately, he picked me up and carried me to the bed.

* * *

If you’ve read the tabloid articles (“ _Woman Abducted by Practitioner of Dark Magic— Omens of End Days Seen!_ ”), you’re probably wondering where the pomegranate comes in. Actually, it’s just a pretty, poetic metaphor for what happened next—the bright jewels of seeds, the sweet juice…

Um, you get the idea. Anyway, I can promise you I didn’t go ten months without eating.

Needless to say, Mom was overjoyed to see me. She was definitely not thrilled to see Kylo beside me, fingers entwined with mine, but she got over it once she got to know him, and once she saw how happy we are together.

Every year we spend from All Hallows Eve until Easter with her, although we do a lot of traveling. That way if anyone’s magic gets out of hand, it isn’t too noticeable. But in general, we tend to balance each other out.

My garden is growing nicely on his plane. Leia is supposed to come see it next spring, give me some tips on how to handle a new ecosystem, since cattails and tulies and young willows and blackberries are growing now by the River of Woe.

I keep telling Kylo we should change the name to the River of Whoa. After all, if I hadn’t caught that miserable cold, we might not be enjoying those pomegranates now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my story! It's funny to re-read it as a Reylo story. Though I wrote it years ago, even then I was fascinated with the idea of balance. I guess that's part of the reason I love Reylo so much.
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, you can find my original fiction under my [real name](https://books2read.com/ap/xekamn/Kathlena-L-Contreras) and my [pen name](https://books2read.com/ap/p8vwKx/K-Lynn-Bay).

**Author's Note:**

> This story began life as a modern AU of the Hades and Persephone myth. I was looking it over recently and thought, "Hmm. Dark, brooding hero. Bright, spunky heroine... This could be a Reylo story!" So here it is.
> 
> If you'd like to read the original version in full, [you can find it here.](https://books2read.com/u/4N1pNm)


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